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REPORT 



BOARD OF EDUCATION 



MASSACHUSETTS 



Agricultural Education. 



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Submitted to the Legislature of Massachusetts in 

Accordance with Resolves approved 

May 28 and June 10, 1910. 



Januaiiy, 1911. 




BOSTON: 

WRIGHT & POTTER PRINTING CO., STATE PRINTERS, 

18 Post Office Square. 

1911. 






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CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Submission of the Report to the Legislature, .... 5 

I. — Preliminary Statements, Summary of the Report and Recommen- 
dations, .......... 7 

II. — Does Massachusetts Farming warrant the Establishment of a 

System of Agricultural Schools? ....... 12 

III. — The System of Agricultural Schools recommended for Ma.ssachu- 

setts, ........... 21 

IV. — Co-operation between School and Home Farm Necessary to an 

Effective System of Agricultural Schools for Massachusetts, . 35 
V. — The Part-time and Project Method Necessary to an Effective 

System of Agricultural Schools for Massachusetts, . . 41 

VI. — The Problem of securing Competent Instructors for a System 

of Agricultural Schools in Massachusetts, .... 62 

VII. — Agricultural Departments in Public High Schools the Principal 

Present Need in Massachusetts Agricultural Education, . . 66 

VIII. — Possible Locations for Agricultural Schools or Departments, . 74 

IX. — Recommendation with regard to Agricultural Education for 

Worcester, .......... 86 

X. — Agriculture as a Phase of Liberal Education in the High Schools 

of Massachusetts, ........ 87 

XI. — Agriculture as a Phase of Liberal Education in the Elementary 

Schools of Massachusetts, ' . . . . . . .93 

Appendix. 
Proposed Codification of the Law relating to Industrial, Agri- 
cultural and Household .\rts Education, .... 100 



®i)c Commontucaltl) of ina55acI)U5ctt0. 



KEPORT ON 
AGEICULTURAL EDUCATIONS 



To the Honorable the Senate and House of Representatives. 

In accordance with the provisions of chapters 108 and 133, 
Resolves of 1910, concerning the advisability of establishing a 
system of agricultural schools throughout the Commonwealth, 
and concerning the practicability and desirability of establish- 
ing a farm school in the city of Worcester, the Board of 
Education herewith reports the results of investigations and 
recommendations, made under its direction by the Commissioner 
of Education, David Snedden, Deputy Commissioner Charles 
A. Prosser and Special Agent Rufus W, Stimson, 

The Board adopts the report and endorses the recommenda- 
tions. 

FREDERICK P. FISH, Chairman, 
SARAH LOUISE ARNOLD, 
ELLA LYMAN CABOT, 
SIMEON B. CHASE, 
LEVI L. CONANT, 
TLIOMAS B. FITZPATRICK, 
FREDERICK W. HAMILTON, 
PAUL LI. HANUS, 
CLINTON Q. RICHMOND, 

Members of the Board. 
Jan. 1, 1911. 



PRELIMINARY STATEMENTS, SUMMARY OF THE REPORT 
AND RECOMMENDATIONS. 

Following is the text of the resolves passed by the Legisla- 
ture : — 

Resolves of 1910, Chapter 108. 
Resolved, That the state boaiTl of education shall investigate the prac- 
ticability and desirability of establishing a farm school in the city of 
Worcester in which instruction may be given, free, in the raising of 
fruits, vegetables, flowers, grains, plants and trees, and in the care 
of domestic animals, and in which similar instruction suitable to their 
years may be given to children. The board shall report in print to the 
general court, with such recommendations as it may deem proper, not 
later than January fifth, nineteen hundred and eleven. [Approved 
May 28, 1910. 

Resolves of 1910, Chapter 133. 
Resolved, That the board of education is hereby authorized and di- 
rected to investigate the advisability of establishing a sj'stem of agri- 
cultural schools throughout the commonwealth, and to report the result 
of its investigation with its recommeridations to the next general couil; 
not later than the second Wednesday in January, nineteen hundred and 
eleven. [Approved June 10, 1910. 

Ill obedience to these resolves, the Board of Education di- 
rected the Conunissioner of Education to make the necessary 
investigations and to engage expert assistance. Mr, Rufus W. 
Stimson, director of Smith's Agricultural School and iSTorth- 
ampton School of Industries, was appointed to assist in making 
the investigations and preparing the report. 

Special acknowledgment is here made of the assistance of 
the following: President Kenyon L. Butterfield and members 
of the faculty of Massachusetts Agricultural College; Secre- 
tary J. Lewis Ellsworth of the State Board of Agriculture; 
Mr. Dick J. Crosby, specialist, and Mr. F. W. Howe, assist- 
ant specialist, in agricultural e<lucation, of the United States 
Department of Agriculture. Office of Experiment Stations ; Mr. 



8 

Arthur C. Monahaii, agricultural specialist of the United States 
Bureau of Education ; the Hon. C. D. Richardson, Past Master, 
and the Hon. Charles M. Gardner, Master, of the Massachu- 
setts State Grange ; and many other citizens of Massachusetts. 

A brief survey has been made of the development of agri- 
cultural education in Massachusetts and like work elsewhere. 
The economic status and prospects of farming, as conducted by 
both men and women, in this State, have been examined. 

Selected and typical centers have been studied, as to the facil- 
ities for transportation, as to the most promising lines of farm- 
ing in practice, and as to the probable enrollment in an 
agricultural school or department. All parts of the State have 
thus received attention, with the exception of the islands of 
Dukes and jSTautucket. It will be easily understood that this 
report can deal only in general terms with the results of these 
local investigations. 

Printed sources of information have been used, and confer- 
ences have been held both with groups and with individuals. 
By far the largest number of consultations have been held on 
their o^vn premises with farmers who are obtaining their liv- 
ing from their agricultural work, and who are regarded by their 
communities as sound in judgment, methods and ideas. 

'No serious appraisement of educational needs and values has 
been undertaken, beyond the strict limits of agricultural train- 
ing adapted to youths from fourteen years of age upward. 
In fact, attention has been almost exclusively confined to agri- 
cultural education suitable for boys, and perhaps for some girls, 
who intend to follow farming for a livelihood, and who, but for 
the type of training recommended in this report, probably would 
follow the practice of a long line of their predecessors, and drop 
out of school altogether. 

Provision of agricultural education for girls who have passed 
their fcmrteenth birthday has been considered. This problem 
raises very imi^ortant questions, both educational and economic. 
There is little experience, so far, by which to be guided. It is 
believed, therefore, that this subject should be further investi- 
gated, and that the questions involved can best be answered by 
actual experiments made in connection with the agricultural 
schools and departments proposed in this report. 



Findings in Beief. 
The agricultural and educational conditions in this Common- 
wealth are believed to warrant the following conclusions : — 

1. Farming in Massachusetts is a highly important vocation. 

2. Massachusetts farming, where most jDrofitably practiced, is 
peculiarly dependent upon, and responsive to, scientific knowl- 
edge and improved methods. Its increasing diversity and spe- 
cialization, which are such promising elements in its progress, 
make more difficult the task of preparation for it, and make 
more emphatic the duty of the State to the boys and girls who 
are to follow it. 

3. Agencies for carrying scientific knowledge and improved 
methods to adults, and to students of such age and preliminary 
training as to enable them to meet the usual college entrance 
requirements, appear to have been both carefully considered 
and fairly well established. 

4. There is a decided lack of, and a pronounced demand for, 
agricultural training of a scientific and very practical character, 
suitable for boys, and perhaps for some girls, fourteen years of 
age and older, who expect to gain their livelihood from, and to 
spend their lives on, Massachusetts farms. 

5. The growing commercial and industrial school facilities 
open to boys and girls fourteen years of age and older, tend to 
lure away from the land and into the congested centers, in the 
absence of competent and attractive agricultural education, 
many young people whose natural aptitudes would make them, if 
properly trained, better and more prosperous citizens in the 
country. 

6. Financial aid for agricultural education, suitable for 
adults and for college students, has for a half-century been fur- 
nished by this Commonwealth and by the federal government. 
State aid for vocational training of secondary grade in agricul- 
ture, is, moreover, entirely in keeping with State aid for inde- 
pendent industrial school work, and to some extent was provided 
for by chapter 505 of the Acts of 1906 and chapter 572 of the 
Acts of 1908. 

- 7. The slow development of secondary agricultural schools, 
the testimony of farmers throughout the State, and the demand 



10 

for the investigation here reported wliich was made by the Legis- 
hiture of lUlO, are evidence of the need of additional legislation 
providing for this kind of agricnltural edneation. 

8. School coniniitlees have long been anthorized and em- 
powered to provide instruction in agricniture in the public ele- 
mentary and high scdiools of the State. While this training has 
been more liberal and cultural than vocational in its aims and 
results, it merits the hearty support of local communities in this 
Commonwealth. 

Instruction in gardening and in other matters relating to the 
farm should be eiicouraged and guided in all the elementary 
schools of the State, where the home environment or the school 
facilities make ])i'oductive work and personal observation l)v the 
pupils |)racticable. 

As an ini])ortant aid to lil)eral cducjition in all of the high 
schools of the State, particularly in those which have a rural 
environment, guidance and encouragement should be given, with 
a view to the incorporation of genei'oiis ])ro] tortious of agricul- 
tural subject matter in the science instruction, and to the sym- 
pathetic correlation of certain parts of the instruction in English, 
history, civics and hygiene with rural life and labor, institutions 
and progress. 

D. In order that more adequate school facilities may be pro- 
vided in this Commonwealth for jireparing those above fourteen 
years of age foi* ])roductive and protitalde farming, vocational 
agricultural de])artments ai'e |)ropos('d in this report for estab- 
lishment in existing high schools. 

The methods and vocational standards of instruction for the 
development of sudi agricultural de]xirtments have nowhere 
been tried in the exact form ])ro])osed in this report. Such 
approximations to this kind of training as have been found in 
this State and elsewhere, and the very general interest in 
and appro\-al of it found among representative ^Massachusetts 
farmers with whom it has been discussed, are believed to war- 
rant giving the de])artment type a thorough trial. 

The exjierimental character of the de])artment type, it will 
be noticed, has been recognized in the ])i'o])osed codificati(^n of 
Ihe law. It is designed that the problems whidi would con- 
front such (le])ai-tnients shall l)e carefully studied, that their 
work shall be thoroughly done, and that no department shall 



11 

be attempted where conditions for success are not reasonably 
favorable. 

While annual State aid to the amount of $10,000 might 
make ten departments possible, it is by no means certain that 
it would be found advisable to establish ten departments, or 
even five, the first year. On the other hand, if the proposed 
dei^artment type of agricultural training should prove in actual 
use to embody the merit which it is believed to possess, pro- 
vision for increasing" the number beyond ten could in future 
be made. 

Recommendations. 

In view, then, of the needs of the State as we have found 
them, the following three recommendations are respectfully 
submitted : — 

1. We recommend that State aid, equal to that granted any 
town, or group of towns constituting a district, foi- industrial 
schools, be continued as at present provided for in the case of 
any town, or group of towns constituting a district, for the estab- 
lishment and maintenance of an independent agricultural school. 
(See chapter 505, Acts of 1906, and chapter 572, Acts of 1908.) 

2. We recommend that provision be made for the establish- 
ment of agTicultural departments in existing high schools, with 
State aid, and with rigid definition and enforcement of voca- 
tional standards. 

3. We recommend that the above provisions shall be con- 
sidered to be sufficient for meeting the needs of Worcester, in 
common with those of all other parts of the Commonwealth, 
and, therefore, to obviate all necessity for special legislation on 
behalf of that city. 

The above recommendations are, of course, to be inter])reted 
in the light of this entire report. 

PROrOSED LeC4ISLATION. 

The Board is submitting to the General Court a proposed 
codification of legislation relating to industrial, agricultural and 
household arts education. In that codification is included what 
is belicA'ed to be ample legal provision for the establishment of a 
system of agricultural schools. 

For convenient reference, a copy of the proposed codifica- 
tion is bound herewith as an Appendix. 



12 



11. 

DOES MASSACHUSETTS FARMING WARRANT 

THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A SYSTEM OF 

AGRICULTURAL SCHOOLS? 

Does farming in Massachusetts offer sufficiently important 
and attractive careers to warrant the establishment of a sys- 
tem of agricultural schools in this Commonwealth, to train 
boys and girls who have reached their fourteenth birthday for 
farm life and work ? The present chapter briefly reviews farm- 
ing incentives and prospects as they are found in this State 
to-day. 

1. Incentives to Farming in Massachusetts are Many. — In 
a given farming enterprise there may be blended any two or 
three, or there may be blended all, of the incentives which make 
farming in this State attractive. 

(1) The stress and uncertainties of other callings lead many 
to engage in farming. Severe competition and uncertainty as 
to the future in business have resulted in the purchase and 
development of Massachusetts farm land. Prospects for a 
profitable investment, a stable occu]iation and a lifelong employ- 
ment at congenial work are incentives to redirection of effort 
in such a case. 

A section of this State was pointed out, during the investi- 
gation leading to this report, which was said to have been bought 
up, one small holding after another, by " broken-down me- 
chanics." It might be fairly considered one of the least 
promising sections for farming. The operations undertaken 
were on a small scale; in no instance on a large one. Health 
and vigor, and self-sustaining life for their children and them- 
selves, free from the severe competition in the trades and 
industries, were the primary incentives in these cases. 

Farming in IMassachusetts has become increasingly attract- 
ive to immigrants who have left the old world and come here 
with the determination to succeed. These immigrants are not 
so much peasants as they are pioneers. They are thrifty and 
observant; they are quick to adopt new ideas and methods. 



13 

Money is saved and invested. Theirs is a program of hope. 
As their savings and their holdings increase in value, their 
standards of living rise; they begin to educate their children, 
and presently are on a level with other good citizens in their 
communities. 

(2) The attractions and associations in the family are strong 
motives with many. Farm after farm is owned and operated 
now by the same family, in whose ancestral line it has remained 
for eight or even nine generations. 

(3) The natural charm of the country may be said to be the 
motive for the establishment of the growing number of more or 
less magnificent estates in Massachusetts. The North Shore, 
the South Shore and the Berkshires are noted for the men from 
the great cities and even from distant States who have sought 
Massachusetts land for its picturesque actualities and possibili- 
ties. 

Most of these estates possess well-rounded agricultural equip- 
ment, and have created a large demand for skilled gardeners, 
florists, fruit growers, herdsmen, grooms and trainers. They 
emjjloy expert farm managers, and supply their own tables with 
the cleanest milk and the choicest farm, garden, orchard and 
greenhouse products. The stables of at least one of these estates 
shelter harness horse championship winners in international 
competitions. The owners pay the highest prices for the best- 
bred live stock, and in notable instances have put their farming 
operations on a strictly economic basis, as object lessons for 
neighboring farmers. 

Beside and among these more splendid estates there is a mul- 
titude of simpler establishments, maintained on a more modest 
scale, for like purposes. 

Sometimes one hears the protest that such estates are, as a 
whole, detrimental to the public good. Whatever may or may 
not be the merits of this contention from the point of view of 
the community at large, it is certain that their establishment 
cannot at present be regarded as detrimental to the interests of 
those who must be dependent upon farming for a livelihood. 

(4) A life pursuit to he found in farming is the compelling 
incentive of many people who engage in agriculture. This 
State has its misfits and failures on farms, as in every other 



14 

line of human activity ; but it also has farmers who love, 
and are finding profitable, the careers on the land which they 
have chosen. The success of the latter is undoubtedly due to 
two causes: (a) to a fundamental liking for the land and all 
the natural accompaniments of its cultivation; and {h) to the 
economic status and prospects of farming in this Common- 
wealth, discussed in the following section. The investigations 
on which this report is based yielded abundant and convincing 
evidence that Massachusetts farmers believe, not only that farm- 
ing in general offers a desirable career, but also that those who 
intend to make farming a life pursuit in this State will find 
themselves put to no serious disadvantage because their lot is 
to be cast in this Commonwealth. 

2. Farm nig prospects are good, and are steadily improving. 
Having glanced over s.»me of the incentiA'es which have led 
men to engage in farming operations, we may now consider 
certain facts and figures with regard to the condition of agri- 
culture in this State. 

(1) TJie agricultural census of Massncliusctts shows that 
farnnng prospects are good. The Massachusetts State census 
for 1005 reported the value of property devoted to agricul- 
ture in general in this State as $288,1 T).'"!, 000. The annual 
farming output was valued at $73,110,000. The growth of 
agriculture in importance is shown by the fact that in 1875 
the total vabu' of output was $37,073,000; in 1885, $47,750,- 
000; in 1805, $52,880,000; and in 1005, $73,110,000. 

In 1005 the value of the agricultural products of Worcester 
County was re]iorted as $14,270,000; and of the city of Worces- 
ter alone as $1,401,000. 

There is no reason fVir believing that State census figures 
for 1010 would show retrogression. In three decades, ended 
in 1005, the annual value of agricultural products in this State 
had ])i-acticany doubled. The Ignited States census may not 
show large additions to the agricultural ]-)0]iulation of this 
Commonwealth, but it may reasonably l)e expected to show 
gains, at least commensurate with those of the last generation, 
in the annual value of INfassachusetts agricultural ]u-oducts. 

(2) Massachusetts farmers say farming prospects are promis- 
ing. Most of the conferences held in pre]iaration for this report 



15 

were personal interviews with Massachnsctts farmers on their 
own premises, — farmers who are regarded by their communities 
as thoroughly reliable, and who are dependent on their farming 
for a living. In all sections of the State the prevailing opinion 
is that no State offers a better opportunity for profitable agi-i- 
culture and a satisfactory home life on the farm than does 
Massachusetts. This was shown by statements such as the 
following : — 

" We have good land." " We have the best markets in the workl." 
" We have good roads and short hauls." " We have excellent shipping 
facilities, and the cost of shipment is light when compared with the 
cost of shipping produce from distant points." " We can generally get 
enough good help." " I increase my market garden production a little 
every year; the more I produce, the more I can sell." 

" The cities ai'e growing so much faster than the rate of increase of 
production from the land, that excessive competition is not to be feared, 
and prices for prime farm products are bound to continue good and 
are likely to become better." " The great variety of soils and products 
is favorable to satisfactory farming, taking one year with another, in 
this State." " A keen eye to the markets, and shipment to New York 
or other out-of-the-State points, when prices rule low here and high 
there, take care of any temporary surplus or slump in home market 
prices." " For choice fruit there are almost unbelievable possibilities 
in the home market, with the port of Boston ready for shipment of 
l^ractically unlimited quantities, especially of apples, to foreign 
markets." 

" We have good libraries, public schools and churches." " The Grange 
in Massachusetts is a splendid organization for getting the farmers 
together for pleasure and the improvement of their life and work." 

Such are the things said by the farmers themselves of the 
advantages of farming in this State. 

(3) The small number of abandoned farms shows farming 
prospects to be improving. Secretary Ellsworth of the State 
Board of AgTiculture now has in press a report of 160 pages, 
entitled " Massachusetts, her Agricultural Resources, Advan- 
tages and Opportunities, with a List of Farms for Sale." The 
publication of this report at just this moment is singularly op- 
portune, and makes unnecessary any extended treatment in this 
chapter of the subject now touched upon. 

In his preface Secretary Ellsworth says that his publication 



16 

is issued at the beginniDg of an exceptional eia in Massachusetts agri- 
culture. . . . While an effort was made to secure the names of parties 
owning or controlling strictly abandoned farms, the attempt was in- 
effectual, and we are forced to confess that in our belief there are few 
such farms in the State. Nevertheless, reports confirm the opinion that 
there is an enormous amount of land lying idle or partly deserted, and 
that many farms are not worked to anywhere near their limit. 

(4) Improved tillage makes farming prospects better. Mas- 
sachusetts land is remarkably responsive to better farming. 
Land once tilled but now lying for the moment largely or even 
entirely neglected may well be regarded as a sign post of dor- 
mant fertility. Such land is simply resting. Striking examples 
of this fact came to view during the investigation the past sum- 
mer. One instance may suffice for the present purpose, and the 
fact that this is furnished by the work of a woman whose farm 
was visited renders it none the less significant. 

The owner of an intensively tilled farm, with a model dairy 
and well-developed piggery, poultry, market-garden and green- 
house departments, desired to increase her output. She therefore 
bought a 20-acre field. This lay next adjoining her own im- 
proved land, but had not been cropped within the memory of 
the oldest inhabitant of that section, — not for at least sixty 
years, and probably not for more than a century. It was 
sparsely strewn with wild grass, gray moss, sweet fern and bay- 
berry. The former owner had often said that he would keep a 
yoke of oxen if he only thought he could grow enough feed for 
them, but he did not believe he could do it. 

The past summer, its first season in tillage at the hands of its 
present OAvner, this field yielded 10 acres of rye, straw and 
grain ; 250 bushels of splendid potatoes ; 80 tons of ensilage, now 
in the silo ; 2 acres of heavy field corn, at the time of the inter- 
view standing in the shocks ; and 2 tons of sugar pumpkins ; 
while at the time the field was visited there were 8 acres in 
clover, sown in the rye and showing a good " catch," l/o-acre 
in turnips, with the remainder of the field laid down to rye 
again. 

(5) Increase of investments in land shows that farming is 
becoming more attractive as a business enterprise. Keen busi- 
ness sagacity has led a caterer well known in this State to 



17 



purchase a farm and develop it as an adjunct to his city busi- 
ness. His farm is a strictly financial proposition. Though 
model equipment and conditions have been established, he 
does not use it for a summer residence, and his visits to the 
farm are for inspection and for conference with his manager. 
Strict accounts are kept. Waste from the catering kitchens 
is sold to the piggery department. Poultry, market-garden, pig- 
gery, fruit and dairy products are sold to the catering ends of the 
combined business. The books show that the farm is a paying- 
investment. 

" Golden I^ew England," by Mr. Sylvester Baxter (" The 
Outlook," Sept. 24, 1910, pages 179-190), is an account of 
the status and prospects of farming in this section. Mr. Bax- 
ter gives the following instance : — 

On a certain Essex County place a Boston business man lias gone 
into apples in a way that ranks the undertaking as a great business 
enteri^rise. A single place, with something like 50,000 apple trees, 
not only cuts a large figure in Massachusetts, — even in the great west 
it would mean " going some." 

(6) With little farms, intensive farming yields large returns. 
Contrasted with the western prairies, the smaller fields along 
and among the hills and streams of Massachusetts have seemed to 
some impossible of profitable cultivation. By them it is even 
asserted that Massachusetts is " not an agricultural State." 
Such a remark is met by the Massachusetts farmer with a blank 
look of amazement. He has no doubt that farming in this 
State is a permanent and an increasingly important vocation. 
He knows that fundamental to advancing agriculture is a 
market commensurate with its output; and he sees the manu- 
facturing towns in his neighborhood growing with a rapidity 
almost beyond belief. 

Even in the west, not the enormous holding, but the smaller 
one is now recognized as the more promising basis for the most 
permanent and profitable agricultural production. Evidence 
is abundant that the little farm may yield large returns. One 
of the tidiest bits of farming seen the past summer was on a 
10-acro farm, of which part was in pasture and only about- 6 
acres were under cultivation. Some of the land was tilted on 



18 

edo'e, in typical Xcw England fashion. All of the fields were 
more or less irregular in their boundaries, and from some of 
them cartloads of stones had been removed, with more to fol- 
low. The land was " kept busy." Market gardening was the 
main feature, but there was fruit ; and there were " side lines " 
of dairying and poultry, for utilizing '' clippings " and unsal- 
able renniants of the principal products. This farm is yield- 
ing a profit of $5,000 a year. 

Other farms visited, which to the unaccustomed eye might 
look small, are yielding net returns of from $2,000 to $10,000, 
and even $12,000, a year. Greater thrift and satisfaction in 
work well done one could not hope to find in any State. 

Mr. Baxter, in the article above cited, gives the following 
instances : — 

A lialf-aci-e strawberry patcli, . . . yields 5,000 quarts, worth $625. 
Eleven liundred dollars have come from an acre and a half of canta- 
loups. There are thousands of acres in asparagus in Massachusetts alone, 
with })rotits of $300 or even $600 an acre. An Italian makes from 
$4,000 to $5,000 a year off of 4 acres in market gardening. Five acres 
in peaches have yielded $2,500 in one year. Apples! That is a story 
in itself. And flowers? Well, there is a lady on Cape Cod who makes 
$200 or so every summer on a ])atch of sweet iteas little bigger than 
a city back yard. As for jiotatoes and corn, there are numerous big 
records. 

(7) Comparison of prodiictiv'tiu with other States shows 
farming prospects to be good. Secretary Ellsworth, in the 
2)amphlet before mentioned, is outspoken and explicit in his 
estimate of the agTicultural prospects of Massachusetts. This 
has previously been intimated, and will more clearly appear 
from the following ]iassage : ■ — 

. . . when ratio of aggregate jiroduction to aggregate acreage, yield 
per acre of certain cro])s and character of tillage are considered, Massa- 
chusetts ranks favorably with the leading agricultural States. The 
following data, gleaned from the latest official statistics, add strength 
to this statement: — • 

In 1900 Massachusetts bad 3,147,064 acres in fai'ms, which yielded 
the jirevious year $42,298,274 Avorth of farm jiroducts. As compared 
wdth the fixQ leading agricultural States, Ave find California, with nine 
tiuies this number of acres in farms, producing only three times as 



19 

many dollars' worth of farm products; Illinois, with ten times the 
farm acreage, producing eight times as many dollars' worth of farm 
products; Iowa, with eleven times the farm acreage, producing nine 
times as many dollars' worth of farm 2>roducts-; Kansas, Avith thirteen 
times the farm acreage, producing four and one-half times as many 
dollars' worth of farm products; and Texas, with forty times the farm 
acreage, producing five times as many dollars' worth of farm products. 

Further, from the estimates of the United States Department of 
Agriculture for 1908 these striking figures are obtained : the average 
production per acre of Indian corn for the United States was 26.2 
bushels; for Massachusetts, 40.4 bushels; of oats for the United States, 
25 bushels; for Massachusetts, 33 bushels; of i^otatoes for the United 
States, 85.7 bushels; for Massachusetts, 95 bushels. In relative rank 
of production per acre, Massachusetts stands among the States, for corn 
fourth, for oats thirteenth, for potatoes twelfth. When compared with 
the leading States in these products, Massachusetts ranks in production 
l^er acre, for corn fourth, for oats first and for potatoes second. 

The crops used for comparison are not the leading agricultural 
products of Massachusetts, but the figures indicate what the intensive 
methods of agriculture practiced by her farmers is bringing forth from 
the soil. While comparative figures for other States of those products 
which are most valuable to Massachusetts are not available, it is safe to 
assert, without fear of contradiction, that, whereas the production per 
acre of such field crops as corn, oats and potatoes is relatively high, the 
production per acre of fruits and other vegetables which respond so 
much more readily to intensive treatment is not exceeded by that of 
any other State of the same or higher latitude. 

3. Conclusions. — It is believed, iu short, that the experience 
of those who are successfully engaged in farming here, and the 
economic status and prospects of farming in this Common- 
wealth, show conclusively that exceptional success awaits the 
work of the exceptional man or woman in this field of economic 
activity; and that farming is bound to aiford a profitable and 
satisfactory living for the average boy or girl who enters this 
field with a thrifty, alert and progressive spirit, and with a 
proper preliminary education. 

At the beginning of the investigation leading to this report, 
the question was raised as to whether a system of agricultural 
schools would be likely to result in increased valuation of 
taxable property on farms, and thus return directly to the public 
treasury at least some portion of its cost. One farmer put 
the gist of the answers of all his fellows into the succinct reply, 



20 



that it did not take the assessors long to discover any improve- 
ments that he made on his farm as a result of better methods. 
Finally, it appears that farming in Massachusetts, viewed 
from the standpoint of both its present status and its prospects, 
is a calling the successful pursuit of which requires a knowl- 
edge of the science that lies back of the practice of agriculture 
as a handicraft ; that, in order to secure a widespread pro- 
ductive and profitable agriculture, it is necessary that voca- 
tional schools supported and controlled by the public should 
train the youth in the best methods of farming; and that farm- 
ing in Massachusetts is a calling of sufficient importance to 
justify both local ond State support of those forms of educa- 
tion that will effectively prepare boys, and, to some extent at 
least, girls, for it. 



21 



III. 

THE SYSTEM OF AGRICULTURAL SCHOOLS RECOM- 
MENDED FOR MASSACHUSETTS. 

It was pointed -out in the previous chapter that the condi- 
tion and prospects of farming in Massachusetts seem to justify 
a system of agricultural schools. The question arises as to 
what types of schools are desirable for this Commonwealth. 
Two promise to be etfective. These are the separate or inde- 
pendent agricultural school, and the agricultural department in 
the j)ublic high school. 

1. Separate Ageicultueal School. 

(1) Dejinition and Examples. — The separate agricultural 
school aims to promote, by education, economic farming. Its 
location, plant, staff and courses of training are determined by 
this object. Such a school may, or may not, be on the same 
site with an institution of different grade or type. Whatever 
its proximity to other kinds of institutions, it requires a dis- 
tinctly agricultural atmosphere and a farming environment. 

Instances of this type are: Minnesota Agi'icultural School, 
St. Anthony Park ; the secondary agricultural courses at Guelph, 
Out., and Storrs, Conn. ; and Smith's Agricultural School, 
Xorthampton, Mass. 

(2) Minimum Standards. — Present experience seems to 
show that schools designed to give vocational education must 
meet certain minimum requirements in order to do effective 
work. The following may be given as examples of such re- 
quirements for the separate agricultural schools : — 

A. Location and Plant. — a. Accessibility. — The eco- 
nomic operation of a separate agricultural school and its use- 
fulness to the State depend upon a considerable enrollment of 
students. Experience demonstrates that an attendance of less 
than 100 means either an excessive per capita cost or inferior 
teaching. The spot selected for it, therefore, should be easily 
reached from a considerable farming area. 



22 

h. Acreage and Variety of Soil. — The land should be typi- 
cal of the surrounding region, and permit of demonstration of 
the best methods of farming for that section of the State. If 
not a special school, devoted, for example, to market gardening, 
it should ha\'e a sufficient acreage and variety of land for land- 
scape gardening, forestry and general farm tillage, as well as for 
gardening and nursery plots. 

c. Buildings. — The buildings should be especially designed 
and grouped for the peculiar work of the school. Such build- 
ings as barns and poultry houses should be of the kind any 
farmer with a moderate amount of capital would wish to erect 
as parts of a convenient, sanitarj^ and practical plant. 

d. Live Stocl'. — Quarters for all kinds of live stock suite<l 
to the locality should be provided. The school might, or might 
not, own the live stock dealt with in class demonstrations. The 
best obtainable specimens of the breeds studied should be seen 
and handled, and proper accommodations for keeping them 
should make it easy to borrow or hire the animals when needed. 
When not filled with live stock, these quarters would still be 
on view as models of their several kinds for housing and car- 
ing for the various types of farm animals. 

e. Oilier Equipment. — The equipment should be modern 
and varied, but every piece should be applicable to some proj- 
ect in practical farming. Submitted to the test of practical 
farming, much, for example, of the equipment usually found 
in high school science laboratories would be omitted and otlier 
equipment would be selected. A nniseum for collecting out-of- 
date farm imiilements and macliines would serve a most ex- 
cellent informational purpose ; but the main object should be to 
provide the best models of implements and machines for pi'es- 
ent economic use. 

B. Support and Control. — The cost of such schools is large, 
generally too h'.rge to be provided by a single community. In 
good schools the initial cost of the plant, including adequate land, 
buildings and equipment, and of providing for from 100 to 150 
students, has been from $40,000 upward. The aunual mainte- 
nance cost has varied from $8,000 u])Avard. In some cases the 
cost has been less than, in others it has considerably exceeded, the 
figures here named for both plant and maintenance. 



23 

a. Local Support. — The school should be established and 
equipped by the local community, — by a town or city, or by a 
group of towns or cities, or towns and cities formed into a dis- 
trict. This should insure economy of construction and adapta- 
tion to local needs. The local community should provide, also, ' 
one-half the cost of maintenance. 

&. State Support. — One-half the maintenance cost of these 
schools should, in accordance with present statutory provisions, 
be borne by the State. In consideration of State support, the 
school should be subject to supervision and approval by the 
Board of Education as to organization, control, location, equip- 
ment, courses of study, qualifications of teachers, methods of 
instruction, conditions of admission and employment of pupils 
and expenditures of money. 

C. Conditions of Admission and Promotion. — All applicants 
for admission above fourteen years of age should be received, 
provided, after a brief probationary period, they proved able to 
profit by the instruction. 

Advancement from subject to subject or from class to class in 
farming subjects should be dependent solely upon the proficiency 
of the pupil in such subjects, and not upon his standing in Eng- 
lish, history or other similar studies. Upon withdrawal from the 
school, whether upon graduation or earlier in the course, every 
student should be given a certificate containing a statement of 
the work which he had satisfactorily completed. 

D. Teaching Staff. — a. Vocatiorial Spirit. — The teaching- 
staff must be in complete sympathy with the vocational purpose 
the school is designed to serve. The instructors should be chosen 
from those who have found, or who intend to find, their life work 
in this field of education. 

h. Fitness. — Aptitude for teaching fourteen to eighteen year 
old boys of exceedingly practical interests and tendencies is indis- 
pensable. One may succeed as a teacher of men, and fail as a 
teacher of boys. One may succeed in a cultural school with 
book subjects, yet utterly fail in teaching practical subjects in a 
vocational school. To natural aptitude must also be added spe- 
cial training in the science and in the practice of different kinds 
of farming, 

c. Originality and Besource fulness. — In devising and lead- 



24 

iiig the students to work out definite farming activities, the 
teachers must be able to bring to bear in new and largely untried 
ways knowledge of the general field of agricultural science and 
practice. Having selected things to be done, it must rest with 
the teaching staff to find help for doing these things, — in related 
portions of mathematics, chemistry, physical science, biology 
and economics. 

d. Co-operation. — One teacher must help another. Unity 
of effort is no less important than is unity of spirit. All eyes 
must first be fixed on the things to be done ; then, towards doing 
those things in the most intelligent and skillful manner, each 
member of the staff' should contribute his particular part. 

E. Course of Preparation for General Farming. — Courses 
should be provided for boys and girls. The girls should be 
trained in all household arts and affairs. They should also be 
allowed, if not required, to take training in such subjects as) 
gardening, j^oultry raising, bee-keeping and ornamental planting. 
Here, however, only the agricultural course as designed for the 
boys is discussed. 

a. Length of Course. — A four-years coiirse for boys enter- 
ing at fourteen should be provided. Each year, however, should 
be complete in itself. This would permit of withdrawal with 
profit at the end of any year. It would permit, also, of admit- 
ting for a year, or for two years, an older student who could not 
give longer time to the work. 

h. Length of Session. — The year should begin not earlier 
than the middle of September, and close not later than the mid- 
dle of June. This would make possible a school year of thirty- 
six weeks, or a school year of some fifty weeks, under a co-opera- 
tive home and school plan. The period of each school day de- 
voted to the school study and activities should probably not ex- 
ceed six hours as a maximum. The time before and after the 
daily school session and on Saturdays would afford proper 
opportunity for day-to-day work at home, where continuity of 
effort, as in the care and handling of live stock, is a necessity. 

F. Principles to he observed in Methods of Instruction. — 
a. Interest. — The essential minimum of the study of books 
should be combined with the maximum attention to practical 
work. Things tliemselves should be handled, studied and rea- 



25 

soiled about; operations, many in number and of an extremely 
practical nature, should be performed. General rules, statements 
or ideas may follow fresh handling of concrete detail, — they 
should seldom precede it. 

h. Responsibility. — Active relationship to real life, and per- 
sistent participation in farming affairs while the student is yet 
in school, should be fundamental aims. Methods should be devel- 
oped, therefore, which involve student ownership and home co- 
operation. 

G. Gradation of Farming Activities or Projects. — a. First- 
year projects.'^ — The first year should deal mainly with proj- 
ects which involve an elementary knowledge of soils and plant 
life, together with the mathematics related thereto. Kitchen 
garden vegetables and flowering plants should be grown. 

h. Second-year Projects. — Certain second-year projects 
should involve extensive experimental study of agricultural 
botany; others should involve the scientific principles and the 
mathematics necessary for successful work in handling the 
smaller farm animals, such as poultry, pigs and bees. 

c. Third-year Projects. — Fruit-growing and market-garden- 
ing projects should receive chief attention in the third year. 
The first principles of agricultural chemistry and the manipu- 
lation of the laboratory apparatus required for their elucida- 
tion should be mastered. Some attention should be given to the 
nuithematics required for field surveys, for business transac- 
tions and for figuring the cost of producing and marketing the 
crops under consideration. A careful study should be made of 
the pumps, engines and other mechanical devices necessary for 
spraying. 

d. Fourth-year Projects. — The major projects of the fourth 
year should deal with animal husbandry, including dairying. 
There should be one term of advanced agricultural chemistry. 
Here the greatest maturity in age and mental grasp have been 
attained. The largest money values are here involved, and the 
most difiicult problems of land fertility, rotation of crops, ra- 
tions, breeding and animal diseases are here to be finally dealt 
with. Farm management, law of contracts and farm accounts 
should be studied. 

1 The word " project," as here used, is defined in chapter V. 



26 

e. Possible Modifications. — It is believed that the above 
gradation of projects by years woidd be found a good outline for 
the development of courses of study suited to local needs. It 
would afford much flexibility as to details of schedules and in- 
struction. At the same time it is recognized that other outlines 
worthy of approval may grow from year to year out of the work 
of the separate agricultural schools. 

//. Good Citizenship. — Along with the major farming in- 
terests of these four years there should be developed the inter- 
ests and powers of good citizenship, through reading, discus- 
sir)U of current events, and the clear and logical expression of 
ideas in writing and public address. 

/. Home Besidence and Woi'l'. — a. Home Infiuence. — 
Students should reside at home. The age of the students makes 
this desirable, if not imperative. 

h. Home Experimentation. — Residence at home should 
vastly multiply the benefits of the school. There would be op- 
portunity f()r the orderly but immediate trying out of new 
ideas and methods, where otherwise habits of postponement 
would be formed. From day to day the teachings of the school 
should be subjected, on a modest scale at least, to the practical 
tests of the home farm conditions of every student. In no 
other way can the maximum value of such a school be realized. 

c. Home Credit. — Home work should be provided for in the 
sj'stem of marking, and full credit for it should be given 
towards graduiitinii. Foi- promotiug a keen S])irit of emulation, 
gatherings of pujdls, parents and others should be held at the 
best farms, or where the teachings of the school are best ex- 
emplified. Prizes for excellence in home work should be 
awarded. 

J. ScJtool Supervision. — Home work should not only be 
advised or suggested, it should also be actively supervised from 
month to mouth. At least one instructor should be employed 
for this purpose throughout the growing and harvesting seasons. 

K. Student Oimersliip. — a. At the School. — All flower 
and vegetable gardening products of the student plots at the 
School should be the property of the students, provided the 
plots be regularly and properly cared for throughout the sum- 



27 

mer. The plots should be of such size that about oue-half day 
a week during the summer would suffice for their cultivation. 
Experience has shown that plots of this size yield crops of suffi- 
cient value to repay the students for their work. Here school 
control should be absolute. 

h. At Home. — Parents should give the students at least 
modest property rights at home, and exact proportionate re- 
sjDonsibility and industry. Part of the garden might be given 
or rented the first year ; a pen of poultry, a pen of pigs and a 
hive of bees, the second ; part of the orchard, the third ; and a 
cow, the fourth. Accurate account of outgo and income should 
be kept in all cases. 

]S[o better test of the practicability of the teachings of the 
school could be made. Though school control is likely to be 
more or less modified by home control, good results should still 
be had by proper choice of projects and harmonizing of inter- 
ests. 

L. School Operations and Products. — a. School operations 
should be primarily for educational purposes. A bad metliod 
may be followed, and beside it an approved method ; the profit 
of one may, or may not, offset the loss of the other. Both to- 
gether make a perfect demonstration for purposes of instruction. 
The results of such demonstrations should be followed and 
observed at proper intervals by the students. They should be 
required to report at the school on the call of the instructor for 
noting the demonstration work of the school in connection with 
the instruction they have severally received. 

h. School Products. — Apart from the products of the first- 
year gardening work, all products of the school farm should be 
disposed of for the benefit of the school. The operations of the 
school departments should be under the direct control of the in- 
structors who teach the subjects the departments represent, 
xiccurate profit and loss accounts for each department should 
be kept. 

i¥. The Special School. — A separate agricultural school 
might be either general or special in character. If general, such 
a school would undertake, usually by a four-years course of 
training, to fit its pupils for at least the general lines of farm 



28 

production practiced in the surrounding territory. If special, 
a separate agricultural school might limit the length of its 
course to one or two years, and confine its instruction to a single 
si^ecialized line of i^roduction, such as market gardening. Such 
a special school might receive students after they had spent two 
or more years in an agricultural school devoted to preparation 
for general farming; and it might also admit older studen{s 
without previous preparation in a general school, if they were 
able to profit from the training offered. 

N. More Advanced Education. — If on graduation a student 
should desire to enter the Agricultural College, one or two years 
of further study at his local high school should enable him to 
meet the conventional college entrance requirements. He might 
have to enter conditioned in one year of French or German ; but 
a condition in such a subject could be easily removed, since credit 
should be given for his extensive agricultural training. 

(3) General Observations. — That a thoroughly vocational 
education in agriculture can be given in the separate agricul- 
tural school, where properly equipped, has been sufficiently 
demonstrated by experience to be beyond the range of uncer- 
tainty. As noted before, however, such a school in this State 
should be so situated as to be easily accessible to 100 or more 
pupils ; its plant WM3uld be expensive and its maintenance cost 
by no means small. 

The separate agricultural school, as herein discussed, might 
be a local school, readily accessible to a considerable farming 
population, whose pupils lived at home and secured a part of 
their practical training through the directed performance of 
their duties on the home place ; or it might be a boarding school 
for pupils gathered from a considerable area. 

Such a local school is impracticable in agTicultural areas inter- 
sected by mountains and pasture lands, where but a compara- 
tively small number of suita1»]e pupils are within daily travelling 
distance of a central point. j\Iany communities of this type exist 
in Massachusetts. 

Many towns or gi-oups of towns, so situated, are able to main- 
tain only moderate-sized high schools, and have within easy 
reach only a limited number of students. The taxable valuation 



29 

of these small centers of population would forbid tlie existence 
of so expensi-se an institution as the separate agricultural school. 
In a system of agricultural education designed to meet the 
needs of the youth of the entire Commonwealth, it would prob- 
ably be necessary to provide either the boarding school of agri- 
culture or the agricultural department in the public high school, 
for the training of the young people of the isolated communities. 
The boarding school of agriculture is worthy of considera- 
tion, because of the attention which it has received in other 
States. It does not, however, seem necessary to adopt it under 
the conditions which prevail in a compact State like Massachu- 
setts, where distances are so short and transportation facilities 
are so good. Rather it is believed that here the separate local 
agTicultural school (without the boarding feature) should serve 
the needs of thickly settled farming districts ; and that the agri- 
cultural department in the rural high school, as described in 
the closing part of this chapter, should, instead of the boarding 
school, train for effective farming those who live in the more 
sparsely populated farming communities. 

2. Separate Agriculturae Department. 

(1) General Ohservations. — In preparing this report, a care- 
ful analysis has been made of the conditions of the smaller com- 
munities as related to the necessary conditions of vocational 
education in agriculture, with the result that a type of school 
found developed to some extent in Canada suggests itself as 
being the most feasible means of meeting Massachusetts re- 
quirements. This has been styled the agricultural department 
of an existing high school, and contemplates the building up 
within an ordinary high school of a vocational department, 
corresponding to the vocational departments in commercial 
studies found in some village high schools. 

From facts and conditions adduced below, it is believed that 
in some localities in Massachusetts, under very careful super- 
vision, such agricultural departments would be possible, and 
could, if rightly administered, give genuine vocational training 
in agriculture. The " part-time work," or school and home- 
farm co-operati^'e method, discussed in chapter Y. of this report, 



30 

would, it is belie\'ed, make such departments vocationally effec- 
tive as ])reparatory courses for productive farming in this Com- 
monwealth. 

(2) Definition and Present Attempts. — -Vocational agricul- 
tural education as a separate department in a high school should 
be as distinctive in its object and atmosphere as is the separate 
agricultural school. Such a dojiartment would best be estab- 
lished in a secondary school wdiich had a farming environment 
and an abundance of readily accessible illustrative material, in 
varieties of farm land, equipment, operations and products. 

There are fourteen departments somewhat of this type in the 
Province of Ontario: six established in 1900, two in 1008, three 
in 1909 and three in 1910. It is intended to develop this 
work until every county in that province has been covered. 

Work of like nature is now being given its first year of trial 
by the Friends' Bloomingdale Academy, Bloomingdale, Parke 
County, Indiana. The practical courses in farm management 
estal)lished by the Agricultural Guild of the University of 
Chicago, in 1908, utilize for practical experience farm equip- 
ment privately owned and land operated for economic purposes, 
as distinguished from land and equipment provided and main- 
tained by endowment or puljlic funds. 

(3) ^linimum Standards. — The agricultural department 
must maintain minimum standards of similar character to 
those fixed for the separate agricultural school. An outline is 
here given of vital factors for the success of such a depart- 
ment : — 

.1. Instructor. — There should lie at least one specialist for 
instruction in agriculture. This teacher should be a man, 
should ])referably have been lu'ought up on a farm, and should, 
where practicable, be a gi-aduate of an agricultural college. In 
short, he should be, first of all, practical, a man interested in 
farming and ca]>ab]e in farm Avork and management. 

His time and attention should be devoted exclusively to farm- 
ing subjects. His service should be rendered throughout the 
growing and harvesting seasons, in part as supervisor of school 
projects at the homes of the students, in part as teacher of 
agriculture at the school. He might also, if requested to do so. 
act as advisor amonG: farmers in the vicinity of the school. 



31 

B. ScJiool Quarters and Equipment. — a. Class Boom. — A 
class room should be given this instructor for his exclusive use. 
This should be on the ground floor, or in a high, well-lighted 
basement, and should be such as to permit of in-door demon- 
strations of farm animals, implements and machines. It might, 
or might not, be in the high school building. 

h. Equipment and Appurtenances.- — His equipment should 
at least include a Babcoek testing outfit, seed-corn germinators, 
special agricultural physics apparatus, individual sets of gar- 
dening tools, hot beds and cold frames. Greenhouse space, 
though not more than a 6-foot by 30-foot lean-to, heated from 
the regular school-heating plant, would be an advantage; as 
would, also, be an acre of land for garden, nursery and demon- 
stration j)lots. 

c. Headquarters for the Instructor. — An office should bo 
provided. This should be large enough for a library and read- 
ing room, and fitted up for such use. There should be furnished 
in this room as complete a file as possible of books, bulletins 
and periodicals on farming specialties. 

C. Home Equipment and Co-operation. — Practically all the 
materials, implements and animals required for demonstra- 
tions should be brought to the school by the students, or should 
be examined on thrifty farms not too far distant. Everything 
examined would thus be part and parcel of actual farming out- 
fits : each implement, animal and building would represent some 
farmer's judgment and money. The school would at every 
point be dealing with definite economic propositions. 

D. Conditions of Admission and Bromotion. — Boys above 
fourteen years of age should be admitted to the Avork of the 
agricultural department of the high school when, upon trial, 
they show themselves able to profit by the training, even though 
they have not satisfactorily completed all the work of the ele- 
mentary school. Girls of the same age might attend certain 
classes. It would be necessary, as is pointed out at another place, 
for those pursuing the work of the agricultural department as 
an elective course to take all studies save the art and science 
of agriculture in the regular high school classes. IsTo student 
should be prevented from attending the agricultural classes or 



32 

be deprived of promotion in them bv inability to take high 
rank in other subjects. 

E. Course of Study. ■ — • The agricnltiiral department in the 
school should otier training in the practice and the science of 
agriculture. The course in agriculture should be elective to the 
regular pupils of the high school, and, as before said, should be 
open to those above fourteen who intend to be fanners, even 
though they might not be able to pursue successfully certain other 
branches of study oifered by the school. Regular pupils pursuing 
the course in farming should he permitted to substitute satis- 
factory work therein for the requirements of the school in such 
cultural subjects as Latin or German, or for certain courses in 
physics, chemistry and biology. 

In this way it would be possible and advisable that regular 
pupils, pursuing, as a legitimate part of their study, the course 
in agriculture, should at the close of a four years course gradu- 
ate with their fellows, and receive a certificate or diploma setting 
forth the work which they had satisfactorily performed. 

The school course should permit of continuous work at home, 
morning, evening and on Saturday, as in the separate agricul- 
tural school. 

a. Dominant Motive. — As in the separate school, the atmos- 
phere and the dominant object in the agricultural department 
should be agricultural and vocational. Much of this atmosphere 
might with profit be extended to other departments of the 
school. Contact with farming objects and activities would vital- 
ize the instruction in the regular courses in science and in 
manual arts. 

h. (Irouplng Studies and Stitdents. — By putting first and 
second year students together in one class, and third and fourth 
together in another, each student would be given double the 
amount of distinctively agricultural training by the instructor 
which would be possible were the students handled in four divi- 
sions instead of in two. By the same means the efficiency and 
enthusiasm of the teacher would be multiplied. In alternate 
years the energy and attention of all could be concentrated now 
on animal husbandry and then on horticultural subjects, or 
vice versa. 



33 

c. Winter School at the Agricultural College. — Moreover, 
the regulations should permit a student who could meet the age 
requirement to take winter short courses, at least during his 
third and fourth years, at the Agricultural College, with no 
prejudice to graduation with his class; that is to say, credit for 
a short course at the college should be accepted as meeting in full 
the winter-term demands of any year at the school. 

d. Schedules of the Instructor and Students. — The program 
should schedule the instructor for from sixteen to twenty periods 
a week during the fall and spring terms, and allow the winter 
term for his vacation. The instructor, in close connection with 
his class instruction, should be scheduled for inspection and ad- 
visory work at the homes of the students and among other farms 
throughout the summer. 

e. Transfer of Students to a Special School. — Should a spe- 
cial school for such training as market gardening be established, 
with a one-year or a two-years course, a student desiring the 
special training of such a school might be transferred to it at 
the close of the second or third year of the general farming 
course of the agricultural department of an existing high school. 

F. Support and Control. — a. State Support. — The salary 
of instructors for such departments would probably vary from 
$1,000 to $1,500 a year, and should be paid in part by the State, 
as elsewhere proposed in this report. (See Appendix, page 100.) 

h. Local Support. — Quarters and equipment, and the iieces- 
sary adjustments of curriculum for providing a well-balanced 
course of study, inclusive of the agricultural subjects, should be 
furnished by the local authorities. If the local school possessed 
wood-working, forging and drawing equipment, correlation of 
the manual arts work with farming would add decided value to 
the work of the agricultural department. The local authorities 
should also pay one-third of the instructor's salary. 

c. Local Committee. — This department might be visited by 
a special local committee interested in practical farming, and 
the advice of such a committee might be sought in developing 
this branch of the work of the school. 

d. State Supervision and Approval. — All matters relating 
to organization, control, location, equipment, courses of study, 



34 

qualifications of teachers, methods of instruction, conditions of 
admission and employment of pupils and expenditures of money, 
while immediately in charge of the local school authorities, 
should be subject to supervision and approval hj the Board 
of Education. 

G. More Advanced Training. — A student who had decided 
to go to college should find the same opportunities open for 
preparing himself for college entrance as does the student in the 
separate agricultural school. An unusually capable boy might 
carry a course in mathematics or a foreign language in the reg- 
ular classes of the school while taking his agricultural course. 
On completion of his agricultural course, one additional year 
of study would perhaps suffice for completing his college pre- 
paratory work. 

Up to this point this report has discussed the farming sit- 
uation in Massachusetts that seems to justify a system of 
agricultural education for the Commonwealth, the types of vo- 
cational schools in agriculture that seem to be advisable for such 
a system, and the standards which should be insisted upon in 
order to make their work effective. 



60 



IV. 



CO-OPERATION BETWEEN SCHOOL AND HOME FARM 

NECESSARY TO AN EFFECTIVE SYSTEM 

OF AGRICULTURAL SCHOOLS 

FOR MASSACHUSETTS. 

The previous chapter discussed the separate agricultural 
school and the agricultural department in a high school as 
desirable types of vocational school education in agriculture for 
Massachusetts. 

It is the purpose of the present chapter to point out why 
co-operation between the school and the home farm is necessary, 
in order to make the work of such schools effective. 

Vocational education is education that has for its controlling 
purpose the fitting of persons of either sex for definite callings 
or pursuits. Vocational schools of every type are coming to a 
recognition of the fact that practice and thinking about the 
practice, practical and technical training must go hand in hand 
in effective vocational education. 

The reason is not far to seek. Most people learn better by 
seeing and by doing, than from books. The experience of a con- 
siderable portion of the pupils in industrial and agricultural 
schools proves conclusively that many persons who have been 
unable to master principles and theories as taught by the or- 
dinary method of the book, have large power of mastering prin- 
cii^les when these are approached through the background of 
their daily employment ; and that, best of all, they possess large 
capacity to retain and apply knowledge so taught and so com- 
prehended. 

Practice and thinking about the practice constitute the key to 
the situation. Industrial and trade schools are securing the 
needed practice for their pupils to-day, either through school 
shops which they are endeavoring to make economically pro- 
ductive, or through the actual wage-earning occupations of 
the i^upils. Thinking about the practice is secured by a prop- 
erly selected and adjusted course of closely related studies 



36 

at the school in which part of their time is spent. The shop 
provides in illustrations and practical work the raw materials ; 
the school, the finished educational product. 

Farm Boys may he favorably placed, but recfuire Concurrent 
Practice and thinhuig about that Practice. — Boys and girls 
who expect to follow farming; for a living probably are not ex- 
ceptions to the general rule. Vocationally effective education 
for them, also, must involve an intimate relationship between 
practical and technical training. 

Belated Study at the School. — The question now arises, 
Where is the boy to secure correct experience in farming ? It 
will not be difficult for the school to give related scientific knowl- 
edge, provided the pupil brings to it a background of experi- 
ence in agricultural activities that enables him to assimilate 
it, and provided he is able, through his practice on a farm of 
some type, to fix the principles and theories gained in the school 
room. 

Previous Farm Practice not Sufficient. — It seems to be clear 
that the pupils of an agricultural school do not, as a rule, bring 
to their studies about agriculture a body of previous farm ex- 
l?erience which the school can utilize in giving a working mas- 
tery of the principles and theories that lie back of the best 
practice. The greater number come from farm homes where 
they may, or may not, have been fortunate enough to receive 
directed practice in scientific agriculture. There is at least a 
slight movement from city to country. It may be expected that 
a small portion of the enrollment in agricultural schools of 
secondary grade will consist of city and village boys who have 
had no training in the routine of the farm. In order that such 
boys may bring to their training something like the same ad- 
vantages possessed by the country-bred pupil, they should, if 
possible, previous to entering the school have spent at least 
one year on a farm. TNHiile this discussion is primarily con- 
cerned with the country-bred boy, it is, in the principles it lays 
down, equally or even more forcibly applicable to the city or 
Adllage boy who has farming aspirations. 

The previous farm experience of the country-bred boy may 
have been directed by a farmer who has been too hard pressed 



37 

by his OAvii farm routine to reflect on his own practice in agri- 
culture, or to direct the work of his son so that it might he most 
educative from the vocational point of view. 

It is significant that many of those who are most desirous 
that their sons shall receive agricultural education through the 
instruction and direction of the school are among the most 
intelligent and prosperous farmers in the Commonwealth. They 
clearly see, for the reasons given in chapter VII., that* even the 
best farmers cannot expect to be the best schoolmasters in this 
line of training. 

The condition of Massachusetts farming in general is not 
satisfactory to the leaders of agriculture nor to the community 
at large. This means that most farm boys, so far as they bring 
farm experience to the school, are more likely to have been 
brought up to use bad or indifferent methods than to use the 
best. 

Moreover, the boy of fourteen as a rule has been too young to 
have been able to reflect seriously or extensively on the problems 
connected with the agricultural activities which he has observed 
or in which he has had a part. 

It is possible, even in the absence of closely related practice, to 
give much effective vocational training in the sciences related to 
different farming operations to those of mature mind who have 
had experience in them. A farmer, for example, who had for- 
merly kept a herd of cows, might attend a course of instruction 
in the principles of scientific dairying. By this means he might 
make a second venture in that field more intelligent and more 
profitable. jSTo one will question, however, that the dairyman 
who was able to put into immediate effect in his own herd the 
scientific knowledge gained in such a course would acquire a 
greater working mastery of the principles that lie back of the 
successful pursuit of his calling. 

It seems to be clear, in short, that the more or less elementary, 
more or less undirected or misdirected, more or less undigested 
farming experience of the country-bred child cannot, in the 
absence of additional practical training, be made a safe basis for 
the effective teaching of agi-iculture as a vocation. 

It is true that, on entering the agricultural school or an agri- 
cultural department in a high school, that boy or girl must 



38 

derive greatest profit wlio brings to the work the richest store of 
previous practical farm experience ; but even with the best-pre- 
pared pupil it will not be safe to suppose that farm experience 
of the younger years will be found fixed and vivid in the mem- 
ory, to be drawn upon at will, as the classroom discussions shift 
now to one phase and now to another of farming. 

Past experience may aid in the work, and will do so to the 
extent to which that experience was intelligent and to the extent 
to which it remains vivid. Practical farming and the book 
study of the subject, concurrently carried on under the direction 
of a specially prepared instructor, appear to be the only certain 
method of securing these ends. Thinking may refer back to 
this experience to some extent ; it must to some extent anticipate 
future activity ; but in the main it is believed that the training 
of the agricutural school, to be effective, must at once provide, 
and thereafter concurrently interrelate, as far as possible, these 
two supplementary processes, — directed farm practice and 
study about that practice. 

Provisions for Proper Farm. Practice. — How many school 
authorities secure for pupils seeking preparation for profitable 
agriculture properly directed experience in farming processes ? 
Agricultural schools of every type, in order to be effective, 
should, it is believed, provide at least a small equipment on or 
near the school premises, for observation and demonstration work 
in correct methods of farming. Such an equipment would be 
possible in the typical rural community. A few communities 
may be sufficiently prosperous to establish and maintain agri- 
cultural schools equipped with the farming plant, equipment, 
animals and materials necessary to diversified and effective 
training in the arts of agriculture. Such an outlay of public 
money probably lies, if not beyond the resources, at least be- 
yond the civic power, of the typical rural community which 
most needs agricultural education. 

If agricultural schools could be equipped with extensive 
school farms, it would be necessary, in order to secure the best 
results, that pupils should devote a considerable portion of their 
time, now employed at home, particularly in the growing sea- 
son, to directed activities on the school premises. But it would 



39 

be impracticable to withdraw to any great extent boys from ser- 
vice on the home farm for service on the school farm. Further- 
more, all the operations connected with the tillage of the soil, 
such as the care and observation of experimental tracts, lack 
significance until the seasons of growth and harvest, — seasons 
that find the school session ended, and the pupils widely scat- 
tered and possibly engaged in cultivating or harvesting the crops 
on the home farm. 

As the most promising solution of the problem of securing 
effective vocational training in agriculture, this report recom- 
mends that the home farms of the pupils be utilized in what 
may be termed " part-time work " in agriculture. 

Part-time work in agriculture would be utilizing home land, 
equipment and time, outside school hours, for practical train- 
ing supervised by the school. The term " part-time work " is 
a descriptive expression, brought over from current discussion 
of certain forms of industrial training, for use in unfolding 
the possibilities of this proposed type of training in the field 
of education in agriculture. Part-time work in industrial ed- 
ucation means that the student spends part of the time required 
for his training in a shop or manufacturing establishment, and 
part of the time at the school building; both school and shop 
work, however, being intimately related and supplementary to 
each other. 

Part-time work as applied to agricultural education would 
mean that the student must spend part of the time required 
for his education in productive farm work, preferably at home, 
and part of his time at the school ; the farm work and school 
study to be closely correlated by the school at points selected 
from season to season or from year to year, and to be given the 
highest possible educational value by competent school super- 
vision. 

Equitable. — The same causes that have brought about a 
widespread demand for co-operation between school and shop 
in industrial training, make just as necessary similar co-opera- 
tion between the school and the home farm in agricultural 
training. Historically, shop and farm at one time gave the 
youth all his vocational training. Of late the tendency has 



40 

beeu, under the stress of modern conditions, to throw npon the 
schools almost the entire responsibility for the indnstrial and 
agricultnral education of minors. It is becoming increasingly 
apparent that the school cannot meet this difficult and exjien- 
sive burden, unaided. It would therefore seem to be equitable 
that the schools should bestow the related theoretical instruction 
which they are so well designed to give, leaving to factory and 
farm the task of giving, under expert direction, the practical 
experience which they are well equipped to confer. 

Economical. — Such part-time work would reduce tlie cost 
of agi'icultural training of secondary grade so as to place efTec- 
tive training for the farm within the reach of many coniuiuni- 
ties which would otherwise be unable to secure it. Part-time 
work would obviate the necessity of sending the boy away from 
home in order to secure the benefits of agricultural training. 
The cost of living for the boy woidd be less at home than at a 
boarding school. Parents would be deprived of the services of 
the boy during only a portion of the day. 

Effective. — Co-operative work between the school and the 
home farm would be the most effective known means of trying 
out, under the conditions of individual farms over widely scat- 
tered areas, methods which have proved to be profitable else- 
where, as, for example, at the State Agricultural Ex]-ieriment 
Station. Such co-operation would furnish the only experi- 
mental moans hj which each l)oy could try out the merits of 
the home farm as an agency for producing profits, when treated 
by the best-known methods ; that is to say, part-time work would 
fprnish the only means whereby the principles and methods 
taught by the school could be positively adapted by the boy to 
the economic conditions on the farm on which he might spend 
his working days. Part-time work thus should give to agri- 
cultural teaching the reality of actual life, as but little school 
training can give it. 

Conclusion. — It is b' lieved, in short, that every purpose of 
economy in the estalilishment and maintenance of a system of 
agricultural schools, and of efficiency in the education provided, 
would be insured l\y utilization to the largest possible extent 
of home land, equipment and time in the training of boys for 
the successful pursuit of farming in this Commonwealth. 



41 



V. 



THE PART-TIME AND PROJECT METHOD NECESSARY 

TO AN EFFECTIVE SYSTEM OF AGRICULTURAL 

SCHOOLS FOR Ma'sSACHUSETTS. 

The present chapter outlines a method hj which, it is believed, 
education through the plan of ^' part-time work " in agriculture, 
recommended in chapter IV., may be made effective. 

Under the " part-time work " plan, developed into a system 
for the whole State, centers would be selected. The instruction 
would be adapted to the kinds of farming prevalent in the dis- 
tricts surrounding those centers. The practical applications of 
the instruction would thus be subject to the obstacles continually 
encountered under the economic farming conditions found in 
any given district; just as they would, also, be aided by all 
the influences in this Commonwealth which nuake for the im- 
provement of farming. The plan, as an educational process, 
is believed to possess unquestionable merit, because farming 
activities w^ould readily resolve themselves into what may be 
termed farming '" projects." 

A Farming Project is a Tiling to he done. — 1. Im/provement 
Projects. — The thing done might contribute some element of 
improvement about the farm, as constructing a concrete walk 
leading to the front door, the planting and nurturing of shade 
trees, the making and maintaining of an attractive lawn. 

2. Experimental Projects. — The thing done might be of an 
experimental nature, as the planting of an untried variety of 
fruit, the feeding of an untried ration, the testing of an untried 
spraying mixture, or the testing of one or another of much 
advertised roofing materials. 

3. Productive Projects. — Finally, the thing done might be 
of a productive nature, as the growing of a crop of clover or 
alfalfa, the growing of a field of potatoes, the growing of a crop 
of silage corn, or the production of eggs for the market. 

A Farming Project is, further. Something to he done on a 
Farm, which tvoidd involve a Limited and Definite Amount of 



42 

Equi'pinent, Materials and Time, and which would be directed 
toivard the Accomplishment of a Specified and Valuable Result. 
— 1. Improvement. — An improvement project might be lim- 
ited, for example, to a given length and width of concrete walk, 
constructed of a given kind of stone, sand and cement, costing 
not to exceed a given sum of money, and requiring not to exceed 
a specified amount of time. 

2. Experimental. — An experimental project might be lim- 
ited, for example, to the planting of a given number of trees of 
an untried fruit, on a piece of ground which could well be spared 
for such a hazard, and involving a cost in time and money which 
it was felt could be afforded at a given time for this risk. 

3. Productive. — A productive project might be limited, for 
example, to the growing of a given area of clover or alfalfa, at a 
given cost for seed, fertilizer and labor, and for the securing 
of a specified quantity and value of feeding stuff or roughage. 

Finalli/, a Farming Project, as the Term is here used, is a 
Thing to be done on, a Farm, vliich, in the Preparcdion for doing 
it and in the Carrying of it out to a Successfid Residt, would 
involve a Thorough- going Educational Process. — 1. Improve- 
ment. - — The improvement project of constructing a concrete 
walk to the front door might involve the study of the nature of 
cement ; its action on sand and gravel or broken stone ; its resist- 
ant qualities to the weather ; the seasons at which it could be 
used ; its cost, as compared with other materials, such as boards, 
plank, tar, brick, flagging and asphalt ; the mathematical deter- 
mination of the proportions of cement, sand and stone to be 
used ; the geometrical determination of the sections into which 
it should be divided, and whether it should be crowned or flat; 
the geographical sources of the raw material; and the market 
conditions for purchasing cement. 

2. Experimental. — The experimental project of planting an 
untried variety of fruit might involve the study of the probable 
adaptability of the variety selected to the soil, the climate and 
the market demands within reach of the farm. 

3. Productive. — The productive project of growing a crop 
of clover or alfalfa might involve the study of the various vari- 
eties of clover; the comparative adaptability of these varieties 



43 

to the given field on which the crop was to be grown and to the 
climate of the locality ; the most reliable places for the purchase 
of seed ; the best time for seeding ; the best time for cutting ; the 
best methods of curing and storing ; the mathematical calculation 
as to the saving in cost of feeding stuffs which the crop would 
afford ; the chemical elements it would furnish in the ration ; 
and the chemical, biological and mechanical effects on the soil 
in which it would be grown. 

A Complete Definition of a " Project " as here used has Three 
Elements. — Thus, it will be seen that a complete definition of 
a farming project as here used involves the three elements of 
(1) something to be done on a farm, (2) under specified con- 
ditions and for a specified valuable result, and (3) requiring 
a thorough-going training. 

Project Fields or Classes. — There are certain broad, general 
fields in which numerous j^rojects might be found. Among 
these are : — 

Vegetable gardening. 

Flower gardening. 

Landscape gardening. 

Orcharding. 

Small fruit growing. 

Growing of general farm crops. 

Farm forestry. 

Greenhouse crops. 

Production of poultry 2:)roducts. 

Beekeeping. 

Swine husbandry. 

Sheep raising. 

Horse raising. 

Dairying. 

Agricultural physics and mechanics as applied to farm buildings, 

drainage, irrigation, and providing and maintaining farm 

machinery. 

Major Projects. — Projects within the above general fields 
might be major projects. Of major projects, the following may 
be given as examples : — 

1. Caring for the Kitchen Garden. — Under the direction of 



44 

ihe school, a boy over fourteen years of age might be required 
or permitted to cultivate the kitchen garden for supplying the 
family with vegetables or small fruit. 

2. Keeping a Pen of Poultry. — Under the direction of the 
school, he might be required or permitted to keep a pen of, let 
us say, twenty-five birds, for the purpose of producing a net 
profit on the enterprise. 

3. Caring for a Selected Part of the Orcliard. — Under the 
direction of the school, he might be required or permitted to 
care for a part of the home orchard, say five apple trees, so as 
to improve the quality of the fruit and thus gain a larger net 
return. 

4. Raising a Specified. Crop of Potatoes. — Under the di- 
rection of the school, he might be required or permitted to raise 
on the home farm an acre, or a tenth of an acre, of potatoes, 
according to his age and strength, so as to secure the best pos- 
sible crop and the largest possible financial return. 

5. Caring for One Cow. — Under the direction of the school, 
he might be required or permitted to care for one cow in the 
home herd, with a view to securing from her the highest pro- 
duction of which she was capable, and to determining whether 
she were yielding an adequate profit. 

Major and Minor Projects. — While the above does not con- 
stitute by any means a complete list of possible major proj- 
ects, it is intended to be suggestive of the many and diversified 
kinds of projects that might be feasible for use in the part-time 
work under consideration. A major project may include a great 
many minor ])rojects. 

Minor Projects are related to Major Projects as Parts to the 
Whole. — Minor projects include all the diversified activities 
which the boy must perform in order to bring the major project 
which he had undertaken to a successful conclusion. 

Details of a Project Suitable for First or Second Year In- 
struction. — Later in this discussion (pages ."ilJ-fiO) details are 
given of a project suitable for use with third or fourth year 
students. The subject in that case is a staple product likely 
to be grown on every farm, or at least in every farm garden. 



45 

At this point in the present chapter it is desirable that the 
possible working out of the project method of instruction should 
be illustrated by details of a subject which would be suitable 
for use with students of the first or second year. 

In the list of major projects above given, the second, " Keep- 
ing a Pen of Poultry," will, perhaps, best serve this purpose. 
This project permits of clear analysis. It is sufficiently familiar 
to make intelligible such technical terms as it may be necessary 
to use. It deals with a branch of agricultural production found 
on every farm and at many village homes; yet a branch from 
which, when conducted on a strictly business basis, it is very 
difficult to make a profit. It has to do with farm products which 
are of very great economic importance for the advancement of 
agTiculture in this State ; since Massachusetts, while admirably 
suited for poultry keeping, imports $25,000,000 of poultry and 
eggs annually, and produces less than $6,000,000 worth per 
year. (See " Agriculture of Massachusetts," the report of the 
Secretary of the State Board of Agriculture, 1909, page 119.) 

Owing to the attention now being given poultry keeping by 
the agricultural colleges and experiment stations, materials for 
teaching the subject scientifically and practically are increasing, 
and make this one of the most promising lines of project in- 
struction for school use. Poultry keeping afi^ords one of the 
best projects for transition from the boy's treatment of animals 
as pet stock to his treatment of them as vital factors in economic 
agricultural production. 

Important as this poultry project is, however, it will, of 
course, be understood that there are many other jn-ojects suitable 
for first and second year use. This project is but a single 
example of the many which might have been given. 

Minor Projects. — Suppose the major project in preparation 
for purposes of instruction be No. 2, above given, " Keeping a 
Pen of Poultry." Then certain minor projects necessary for 
carrying out this major project might be: — 

1. The huilding of a poultry house (if necessary), according 
to plans and specifications worked out at the schoolhouse. This 
minor project in turn could be broken up into a number of 



46 

subordinate minor projects necessary to its snccessful com- 
pletion, such as : — 

(1) The Selection of a Site for the Poultry House. — Here 
the decision made might take into consideration: — 

A. The suitability of the soil for poultry culture. 

B. The condition of the underdrainage of the site, and the possibilities 

of securing' proper surface conditions. 

C. Conditions of sunlight and shade as factors in the proper care of 

fowls. 

D. Convenience of access from house and barn. 

(2) The Adoption of a Plan for the Poultry House. — ■ Here 
the decision made might take into consideration : • — 

A. The style of construction best adapted to the purpose for which 

the structure was to be used. 

B. The size of the poultry house necessary to the success of the project. 

C. The fittings which would be most sanitary, most convenient, and 

therefore on the whole most economical. 

(3) The Materials entering into the Construction of the Poul- 
try House ( inv(ilving kind, cost and availability). — Such ques- 
tions as these would naturally i^resent themselves: - — • 

A. Should the foundation be i)ermanent, or temporary? 

B. What sizes of dimension stock would be required? 

C. Should the flooring be earth, boards or cement? 

D. Should the siding be rough, or planed ; matched, battened, or pro- 

tected by paper? 

E. Should the roofing be shingles, matclied or battened boards, metal, 

or some form of patented roofing of the rubberoid type? 

F. Should the building be painted ; and, if so, what would be the best- 

Avearing and most economical color and mixture? AVhen should 
the paint be applied? 

2. The selection of hirds, as determined by the purpose in 
keeiDing them (whether for show stock or utility, breeding or 
egg producing). This minor project in turn might be broken 
up into a number of subordinate miiior projects necessary to its 
successful completion, such as: — 

(1) The Choice of Type and Breed. — Such questions as 
these would naturally present themselves : — 



47 

A. Is a meat type of bird desired; and, if so, what is the best breed 

or type"? Is color of any imijortance"? 

B. Is the egg type desired ; and, if so, what variety ? Should the color 

of the egg be a determining factor? 

C. Among what may be termed general-purpose types, what may be 

considered the best stock both for egg production and for final 
finishing as table birds? 

(2) The Choice of Breeding StocJc. 

A. When should breeding stock be selected and assembled for produc- 

tion of the eggs required for hatching? 

B. Should close attention be paid to breed shape? 

C. To what extent and for what reasons should color and plumage be 

determining factors ? 

(3) The Choice of Method of Beginning the Project. 

A. Should the beginning be made with eggs; and, if so, where can the 

eggs of the breed and type desired be secured? What would 
they cost, and when should they be ordered? 

B. Would it be more economical to begin operations with incubator 

chicks a few days old? If so, where could such chicks be had, 
when could they be had, and at what cost? 

C. Should the beginning be made with full-grown birds? Where could 

they be had, when, and at what cost? 

3. The Feeding of the Poultry. - — This minor project might 
in turn involve a number of subordinate minor projects necessary 
to its successful completion, such as : — 

(1) The Selection of the Kinds of Feed. — Such questions as 
these might naturally present themselves : — 

A. When should hard grains be used? 

B. What are the merits of ground grains, as distinguished from hard 

grains ? 

C. Under what circumstances are mixtures and mashes desirable? 

Should these be fed wet, or dry; and should they be home- 
made, or bought on the market? 

D. In what proportions should animal feed be provided, and in what 

form or forms could it be most economically fed, — in beef 
scraps, for example, or in green bone? 

E. Should gTeen feed be furnished? For winter feeding, what quan- 

tity, if any, of cabbages and roots should be stored? 



48 

(2) Worlihifi out Frohlems of Feeding. — Such questions as 
these might naturally present themselves : — 

A. To what extent should there be a variety of feeds? 

B. What relationship do feeding and exercise bear to each other? 

Should dry grain be fed in the litter, or be fed in hoppers, or 
both? What differences should there be, if any, between feed- 
ing on free range and feeding in confinement'? 

C. What part should grit, oyster shells or charcoal form of the ration, 

and for what reasons? 

D. To what extent might feeds be grown at home, and to what extent 

must they be bought on the market? 

4. Other minor projects within the major project of " Keep- 
ing a Pen of Poulti'y," which might also be analyzed into 
numerous subordinate minor projects, each necessary to the suc- 
cessful performance of the larger minor project and the major 
project of which it forms a part, are: — 

(1) The production of eggs with profit. 

(2) The 2iroduction of chicks by incubator, 

(3) The care of chicks by artificial brooding. 

(4) The I'earing of chicks, 

(5) The handling of young stock. 

(6) The fattening and killing of poultry. 

(7) The marketing of eggs and birds. 

In like manner, every major i3roject similar to those hereto- 
fore described, chosen by the school for purposes of instruction, 
might be analyzed into the minor projects of which it was com- 
posed, both in order that the various activities of the boy in the 
successful accomplishment of the major project might be effec- 
tively directed and supervised, and, as we shall see later on, in 
order that the theories and principles related to the different 
phases of his task might be given at the time when they would 
be most effective from the practical and the educational points 
of view. 

Three factors must, it is believed, determine the measure of 
success in any given plan of part-time work in agriculture : 
(1) the farmer and his farm; (2) the school and its agricul- 
tural supervisor; (3) the boy and his projects. 

1. 71ie farmer and Iris farm must constitute the fundamental 



49 

factor in the practical training of the boy. There eonld he little 
effective work in the field of part-time training for the farm 
without a reasonable spirit of co-operation on the part of the 
parent. 

There are at least three ways in which the parent could aid 
in making the directed farm experience of the boy more educa- 
tive: (1) in the use of the home plant; (2) in the use of the 
home time of the pupil; (3) in giving the boy's projects 
economic importance, 

(1) In the Use of tlie Home Plant. — One of the most es- 
sential features of the co-operative part-time plan between home 
and school is that the parent should be willing to devote from 
time to time, in accordance with the plans of the supervisor or 
teacher in charge of the work, a reasonable portion of his build- 
ings, orchards, garden, pasture, forest and other fields, and of 
his implements and machines, animals and materials, to the 
directed training of the boy. 

(2) In the use of the home time of the pupil the fullest valve 
of the agricultural course will come from the fullest possible 
participation of the boy in the ordinary routine of farm work 
as usually carried out by the parent ; but the greatest benefit 
of the school cannot be had without the use of a part of the 
boy's time, during the hours spent at home, for strictly school 
purposes. The following are a few of many illustrations of 
what might be the directed use of a part of the home time of the 
pupils iu the pursuit of projects suggested and directed by the 
school : — 

^1. The boy might help with the milking throughout his course, where 
the object was to get the cows milked as quickly as possible, 
and where no records were kept. During certain months of at 
least one year, the school should require whatever time might 
be necessary for keeping an accurate record in pounds and 
ounces of the yield of a part of the herd. This might be limited 
to the weighing of milk from a single cow, and giving the cow 
credit for what she produced. 

B. It might be part of the boy's business to assist in feeding the cows. 
During part of his course, sufficient time should be given for 
weighing the ration and charging at least one cow with what it 
cost to keep her. 



50 

C. In the ordinary routine to which he had been accustomed in milking, 

much or little attention might have been poid to cleanliness of 
cows, utensils or the person and clothing of the milker. During 
part of his time in school, the boy should be given whatever 
time might be necessary for milking at least one cow and pre- 
serving her milk under absolutely sanitary conditions, and for 
sampling the milk for bacteriological tests. 

D. In the ordinary cropping of the farm, much or little attention might 

be paid to leguminous crops. But during one season at least, 
facilities should be given the pupil for growing a patch of 
moderate size of clover, and for observing the eliect of intro- 
ducing a large proportion of clo\-er into the ration of the cow. 

E. In the ordinary conduct of the farm, much or little attention might 

be paid to the selection and testing of corn for seed. But 
prior to planting, one season at least, the boy should be given 
whatever time might be necessary for making germination tests 
of the corn which it was proposed to i^lant. 

F. Also, during one season, the boy should be given control of a jiortion 

of a corn field for making an " ear to row " corn test ; for 
observing the difference in yield from different ears of corn, — 
all the corn from one ear being planted in one row and all the 
corn from another ear being planted in another row. 

G. In the ordinary routine of the farm, it might be the business of the 

boy to tend the poultry. During at least one year, he should 
be given control of at least one pen of poultry, and facilities 
for feeding a balanced ration and trap nesting individual birds 
for comparison of productivity in laying. 
77. It might be part of the usual work of the boy to help cultivate and 
harvest the potato crop. During one season at least, he should 
be given facilities for testing the value of the use of formalin 
for the prevention of potato scab, and of the Bordeaux mixture 
for protecliou against potato blight. 

(3) //( giving tlie hoy's projects economic iniportaiice, the 
active aid of the parent woukl again be ahnost indispensable. 

A. Keeping Accounts. ■ — -Whether or not the parent were in 
the habit of keeping books, it would l)e vital to the success of the 
school training that accurate accounts of outgo and income 
should be ke]3t with regard to certain home projects dii-ected by 
the school. Every hoy should be taught business-like methods 
for carrying on work. ]\lodern business methods provide for 
discovering exactly where money is made, and where it is lost, 
at any stage or in any part of a given enterprise. 



51 

The boy should be given opportunity for testing, under his 
home conditions, the value of methods which have proved effi- 
cacious in business. The school, to be effective, must teach 
economic production in every phase of farm life for which it 
gives preparation. Moreover, accounting is necessary to any 
intelligent comparison of the effectiveness of the method advo- 
cated by the school with that of the method previously followed. 

B. Projects as Business Enterprises. — If the experiences 
of the boy in the farming projects are to be educative to the 
largest degree, it is believed that they should be conducted 
strictly as business enterprises. Four methods of meeting the 
problem of the cost and profit of these directed farming opera- 
tions would be possible: (a) the parent might meet all the cost, 
and give the boy all the profit ; (6) the parent might meet all the 
cost, and retain all the profit; (c) the parent might meet all the 
cost, and share the profit with the boy; (d) the boy might re- 
ceive the net profit, after the cost of the project had been paid. 

From the educational point of view, the last method, by which 
the boy, after conducting the given project as a business enter- 
prise, should profit only to the extent to which his total re- 
ceipts exceed the total cost of the enterprise, is believed to be in 
every way preferable. By this method the boy would learn, 
once for all. through his own experience, that there can be no 
product without cost, and no profit without excess of receipts 
over all expenditures. After such an experience, he would not 
be likely to undertake a new enterprise without a serious at- 
tempt to estimate accurately his probable profit. The boy would 
be subjected to the prevailing economic conditions under which 
the home farm must yield a profit, or a loss, at the end of each 
year of work. 

The method by which the boy became on a small scale a 
farmer or a business man for himself would give the project 
which he was carrying on a reality not otherwise attainable, 
that must heighten measurably his interest in the work and in 
the related study of the school, and must fix better than by any 
other device the training which he was receiving. 

Incidentally, it may be remarked that, as a matter of public 
spirit, the citizens of the community might do much to further 



52 

the objects of the school by admitting the agricultural instructor 
or supervisor and his students to their premises, for the exam- 
ination of animals, machines and all out-door and in-door opera- 
tions, and by explanation and discussion of their methods of 
accounting and their improved farming processes. At another 
point in this discussion the possible fields of usefulness to a 
community of such an instructor or supervisor are pointed out. 
Effective service on the part of the supervisor in the field of 
helpful suggestion there mentioned could be rendered only 
where there was a cordial attitude of co-operation on the part 
of the people in the community who were desirous of either 
the improvement of rural conditions in general or the better- 
ment of their own farms. 

2. The School and its Supervisor. — Whether part-time work 
in agriculture were conducted under the auspices of a separate 
agricultural school or of a separate department in a regular 
high school, it is believed that it would require the services of 
a trained and ex])erienced agriculturist, who should devote his 
entire time to teaching the principles and the best methods of 
farming. It is believed, further, that largely through this in- 
structor or supervisor of agriculture the school should: (1) 
choose the projects to be undertaken by the boy; (2) direct his 
work in the discharge of his projects; and (-V) pnt him in pos- 
session of the principles that relate to them. 

(1) ///. the selection of the projects to he undertahcn Inj the 
hoy, the instructor should take into consideration: — 

A. What farming enterprises are profitable, or could be made so, in the 

neighborhood. 

B. The age of the boy. 

C. The kinds of projects that would be feasible on the home farm. 

D. The boy's routine farm work at home. 

E. The assistance that the father could afford to give in materials and 

equipment. 

F. The suitability of the project to the season of the year. 

G. The projects and portions of projects that could best be cari'ied out 

at the school, and the best time on the program of the year for 
these jiarts of the work to be done. 

The problem of the building of a ])oultry house by the boy 
Avould be one of the possilile minor projects, as before shown, 
when the larger jiroject of keeping a pen of poultry was under 



Do 

consideration. This problem would naturally involve such 
questions as these : — 

A. Would the student have the necessary time? 

B. Could the necessary materials be provided by the parent or student? 

C. How much personal supervision of the actual work of construction 

would be necessary or advisable on the part of the supervisor? 

D. Would 2:)rofitable poultry keeping on a given home farm require 

the improved accommodations which the model poultry house, 
built by the student, would furnish? 

E. How far would conformity to the standards set up by the school 

be necessary in determining what would be a model type of 
poultry house for a given farm? 

F. In what year of the school course should the building of a i^oultry 

house be undertaken, in order that the training in poultry 
keeping might be made most profitable? 

G. What time of the year could the student build a jtoultry house to 

best advantage? 

The problem of conducting the building of the poultry house 
as a strictly business enterprise is a project which would 
naturally involve these questions: — 

^4. To what extent, if at all, could the boy be required to meet, or be 
charged with, all cost save his own labor, and be credited with 
a fair inventory valuation of the completed structure? 

B. If the i^arent must advance the money or materials, what rate of 

interest, if any, should be charged the boy? 

C. What method of accounting should be adojDted? 

D. Should such records be kept as would enable the cost of this build- 

ing to be compared with other similar buildings in the neighbor- 
hood, as a check upon the business-like character of the boy's 
working out of this project? 

(2) In directing the work of the hoy in the discharge of his 
projects, the school must of necessity, it is believed, undertake 
the supervision of a portion of his work at home. Supervision 
of part-time work in agTiculture would not be an attempt on 
the part of the school to interfere with the private management 
of the farms of the parents. Supervision would, nevertheless, 
be a continuous effort by the school to assist, advise and en- 
courage the students in applying under home conditions, farm 
methods which had proved successful elsewhere, and thus to 
cause the practical training of the students to result in voca- 
tional efficiency. 



54 

The instructor ivould not undertake to supendse all the de- 
tails of the farm management on any given farm. Daily super- 
vision v^'ould be impossible, because of the number of farms to 
which the work of the school must be extended. Excessive 
attention to minute details of farm work on the part of the 
instriictor might create needless friction between himself and 
the parent, or might interfere materially with the supervision 
of a proper amount of project work. It is, therefore, not con- 
templated. 

The school should not, it is believed, undertake to shift re- 
sponsibility for the economic management of a farm from the 
shoulders of the parent to the shoulders of the public. 

The instructor woidd undertal'e to supervise certain selected 
major projects and their related minor projects performed by 
the boy at home. In a given year and season attention might, 
for instance, be concentrated upon the project of keeping a pen 
of poultry. Having given the study related to this project, the 
instructor would supervise the apiDlication of that study. The 
following examples illustrate what the character of such super- 
vision might be : ■ — - 

A. In the bnikling' of the poultry house, the actual Avork of putting 

up the structure might, or might not, be supervised by the 
instructor. All other elements or phases of the enterjDrise, 
as indicated by the outline, should be Avorked out by the 
student under the direction of the school. 

B. The course in farm shop work of the school might well undertake 

to deal with the problem of the actual construction of the 
poultry house. 

C. It would be the duty of the instructor or supervisor to canvass 

thoroughly with the student the relative merits of dit^erent 
types and methods of poultry keeping, from the points of view 
before indicated. His supervision might go the extent of 
passing judgment on any proposed purchase of breeding stock, 
chicks or eggs. 
B. The supervisor would not personally direct the daily routine work 
of feeding and watering j^oulti-y. His duties would consist of 
directing the thorough study of jiossible feeds and mixtures, 
their comparative cost and availability, and their suitability to 
the age, condition and purpose of the student's particular birds. 
For such supervision personal knowledge by the instructor of 
the exact home conditions would be necessary. 



55 

The supervision of the practical home work of the boy or girl 
would naturally follow the settlement of such problems as 
these : — 

.•1. How could supervision and instruction be closely correlated? 

B. How should the time of the instructor and of the pupil be appor- 

tioned between home and school duties? 

C. What would be the maximum radius, from the school building as 

a center, of effective supervision? 

D. What methods might be employed for securing and holding the 

co-operation of the parent and the community? 

E. By what means might satisfactory standards in the practical work 

of the student be maintained? 

Thus far we have discussed the duties and responsibilities of 
the special instructor or supervisor of agriculture in the field of 
direction of the boy's projects on the home farm. 

The instructor might undertalce to give help to others than 
those connected with his school. There are not wanting those 
who believe that such an agricultural instructor attached to a 
regular high school might render valuable service to the com- 
munity in which he was employed, in what might be termed the 
field of suggestion. Considering the previous training and ex- 
perience required of this instructor, he should be a man well 
prepared to be of wide assistance in a farming community as an 
advisor in emergencies which called for special knowledge and 
skill. If met by a problem with which he could not cope un- 
aided, — and there might be many such problems, — he would 
know the best men. books and bulletins for consultation in such 
emergencies. Such problems might arise from attacks upon 
crops by injurious insects or by fungous diseases. 

The friendly advice which the agricultural instructor might 
give need not mean a meddlesome attitude on his part. His 
suggestions would not be given save when requested, or when 
it was evident that they would be welcome. 

Tlie field of suggestion would naturally begin with farms 
represented in the school by students. The instructor would of 
course stand ready to give the parents any advice of which he 
might be capable, or to get for them, or instruct them how to 
get, any information which they might need or desire. With the 



56 

gradual extension of liis knowledge to the other farms of the 
community, he might be expected to stand ready in a similar 
manner to be of assistance to the owners of those farms. 

3. The hoy and liis projects form a natural connecting link 
between the farmer and his farm, on one hand, and the school 
and its instructor, on the other. At the farm, the pupil deals 
with the practical aspects of his projects; and at the school, with 
their scientific aspects. The foregoing discussion has been de- 
voted chiefly to the practical aspects of the proposed project 
method of instruction. The present section lays strongest em- 
phasis on the related study essential for the successful carrying 
out of a particular project. 

Details of a Project Suitable for Third or Fourth Year In- 
struclioii. — Earlier in this chapter a project was dealt with 
which might, for the most part, be successfully carried out by 
a first or second year student. For the present discussion a 
project has been selected which would require considerable 
maturity of age, strength and training for its successful accom- 
plishment. It is true that simpler problems in potato growing- 
have been successfully carried out by elementary school pupils ; 
but even a glance o^'er the elements which enter into the proj- 
ect now to [)o outlined will shoM^ that problems altogether too 
serious to be comprehended or undertaken by the younger pupil 
are here involved. 

It is to be understood, of course, that the following project is 
but one of many which might be selected. 

(1) Major Project. — It is assumed that the boy has chosen 
for his major project the development of a method for increas- 
ing the profit from the potato crop customarily grown on the 
home farm. It is further assumed that 5 acres of potatoes are 
generally grown ; that this jeav the crop is to be gi'own on 
clover s(td ; that the variety of potatoes to be grown has been 
chosen by the father ; and that the boy's father is willing that 
his boy shall have complete control of a given number of rows 
of the 5-acre field, and shall be furnished the necessary tools 
and materials for his project. 

(2) Minor projects necessary for carrying out the above 
major project might then be as follows: — 



57 

A. Insuring the most abundant crop by: — 

a. A Proper Seed Bed. — The related study here would involve 

knowledge of : — 
(a) Conditions of soil, air, texture, temperature and 
moisture most favorable to the growth of the potato 
plant, including methods of reducing au undesirable 
amount of " free " water, of avoiding too great dilu- 
tion of i^lant food, and of securing a desirable amount 
of " film " water. 
(6) Methods of preparing the seed bed, including the com- 
parative advantages of fall and spring plowing, and 
the best treatment of the land in the spring after 
plowing and prior to planting. 

b. Proper Fertilizing. — The related study here would include 

knowledge of : — 

(a) Chemical composition of the potato ^jlant, its osmotic 
and digestive i^rocesses, and the quantity of available 
fertilizing materials it is capable of assimilating. 

{b) Comi^lete fertilizers for the production of potatoes, in- 
cluding analyses of standard fertilizers, and the 
jilant-food values for potato growing of chemicals and 
mixtures offered for purchase. 

(c) ComiDarative desirability of muriate and sulphate of 
potash for producing a crop to be disposed of in an 
immature state as new potatoes, or for producing a 
crop of late potatoes to be disposed of for winter 
use ; and the extent to which the " mealy " character 
of the mature crop should be the determining factor 
in choosing between these two kinds of potash. 

{d) Clover sod as a factor in determining the proportion of 
nitrogen to be supplied. 

(e) Best formula for a complete fertilizer for this particular 
crop, taking into account the potato plant, the previous 
crops and their fertilizer treatment in the system of 
crop rotation followed on the home farm, the present 
soil conditions and the purj^ose of the crop. 

(/) Most liberal amount of fertilizer warranted for use in 
growing this particular crop, in view of the known 
condition of the land and the assimilative jjowers of 
the potato i^lant; and the saving in cost by home mix- 
ing of the supply to be used. 

c. Using the Best Seed. — The related study here would include 

knowledge of : — 



58 

(a) Botanical cliai^acteristics of the potato plant; the dif- 

ference between a seed and a tnber; and potato im- 
provement by various methods and conditions of 
propagation, taking into account tendencies of the 
potato plant to " variation " and to " mixing in the 
hill." 

(b) Importance of planting "seed" selected in the field 

from the best-yielding hills, rather than seed selected 
from the bin merely by size of tubers. 

(c) Advantage of using potatoes for planting which have 

been properly storeil, and the effects of freezing and 
sprouting in the cellar. 

(d) Conditions under which it may be desirable to sprout 

potatoes to be used for planting, in a warm, well- 
lighted room, — -the temperaiure, the time and the care 
in handling required for such sprouting. 

(e) Size of piece and number of eyes to the inece, as im- 

portant factors in starting the crop and in the quan- 
tity of its yield. 

d. Proper Plant ituj. — The related study here would include 

knowledge of : — 

(a) Botanical and chemical characteristics of the potato 
plant, as to its feeding habits, the growth of the tubers, 
and the effect on the tubers as food products of ex- 
jiosure to the sun during their growth. 

(?>) Distances between rows, and between seed pieces in the 
row. 

(c) De])th of planting, in its relation to protection of the 

tubers from the sun, shielding the croj:) from possible 
rot-producing bacteria and spores, and subsequent 
cultivation, whether by the " level " or by the " hill " 
method. 

(d) Best time for i>lanting, wliether for " early " or for 

" late " potatoes. 

e. Proper Sprayiny. — The related study here would include 

knowledge of : — 

(a) Botanical characteristics of the potato jilant, particularly 
the relation of health and luxuriance of foliage to 
tuber production. 

(6) Insect enemies of the potato plant, and their entomo- 
logical characteristics, such as their methods of proj^a- 
gation and their feeding habits. 

(c) Depredations of insects, and their possible relation to 
attacks upon the potato jdant by plant diseases. 



59 

(d) Paris green: its ehemieal composition; its protective 
action against the insect enemies of the potato phint; 
clangers attendant upon its use; its possible combina- 
tion with Bordeaux mixture; and the best formula, 
method of preparation and periods for its application. 
/. Proper Cultivation. — The related study here would include 
knowledge of : — 

(a) Physical characteristics of the soil, particularly the 

capillary movement of water to the surface of the 
soil, and exhaustion of soil moisture by evaporation. 

(b) Surface conditions most favorable for receiving rain 

water without washing, puddling or subsequent 
baking. 

(c) Value of a "soil mulch," and the most desirable method 

and frequency of cultivation for maintaining such a 
mulch. 

(d) Comparative cost and advantages of " level " and " hill " 

cultivation, and reasons for the choice of the par- 
ticular method to be followed in cultivating the present 
croj). 

B. Insuring the cleanest crop by: — 

a. Dipping the "seed" potatoes in a formalin solution. The re- 
lated study here would involve knowledge of : — 
(a) Plant parasites which produce "scabby" potatoes, and 
the biological conditions favorable and antagonistic 
to their growth. 
{h) Formalin solution: its chemical constitution; its chemi- 
cal action on these damaging potato parasites; and 
the proper formula and method for its use in pro- 
tecting the potato crop. 
&. Suhstitution of chemical fertilizers for barnyard manure. The 
related study here would involve knowledge of : — 
(o) Dangers of infection from the use of barnyard manure. 
(&) Dangers of infection, if any, from the use of chemical 
fertilizers, 

C. Insuring the soundest crop by spraying the potato plants with 

Bordeaux mixture. The related study here would involve 
knowledge of : — 
a. Bacterial and fungous diseases to which the i^otato plant is 
subject; evidences of their j^resence; and Avhether or not 
they are preventable. 
h. Bordeaux mixture : its chemical composition ; its protective 
action against jDotato-plant diseases; and the best formula, 
method of preparation and periods of application for its 
use. 



60 

D. Other minor projects would include the most ijrofitable means and 
methods of harvesting, storing and marketing the crop. And 
other study related to these projects would include knowledge 
of jJotato implements and machines and their use; the compara- 
tive advantages of field pit and cellar for storage; principles 
and means of ventilation, and the temj^erature at which potatoes 
should be kept ; near and more distant markets, and comjjarative 
transportation cost; prices and the probable tendency of prices, 
in view of the press and government reports of the potato croji 
for the State, New England, the country and the world. 

General Ohservaiions on Belated Study. — The study related 
to the work of carrying out this potato project embraces, there- 
fore, important matter from several sciences, including botany, 
chemistry, physics, entomology, bacteriology and plant pathol- 
ogy. For the calculations, mathematics would be necessary ; for 
keeping the accounts, bookkeeping would be required ; for correct 
correspondence, there should be training in business English; 
consideration of transportation, markets and world production 
would involve knowledge of commercial and agricultural geog- 
raphy. 

The project method of instruction on the side of related study, 
thus, it will be evident, must insure that the boy, in carrying out 
his projects, shall pass through a thorough-going educational 
process. 

Good Citizcnsliip. — It is proposed, furthermore, that the 
division of time, in carrying out the school and home farm 
co-operative method of training, shall be about as follows: for 
the execution of the projects, including work during vacatio'ns 
and other out-of-school hours, 50 per cent. ; and for the related 
study, 30 per cent. The remaining 20 per cent, of the time of 
the boy is expected to be used for general culture and good citi- 
zenship instruction, wherein systematic courses may be provided 
in such subjects as English, history, civics, current events, math- 
ematics and science. 

Conclusion. — It is believed that the vocational education for 
farming proposed in this report, and embodying the project and 
part-time work method outlined in the present chapter, will 



61 



justify itself from every reasonable point of view, and that the 
system of agricultural schools which this report recommends 
will prove to possess undeniable merit as training schools, both 
for farming as a definite calling, and for intelligent and vigorous 
participation in the community life of the Commonwealth. 



62 



VI. 

THE PROBLEM OF SECURING COMPETENT INSTRUCTORS 

FOR A SYSTEM OF AGRICULTURAL SCHOOLS 

IN MASSACHUSETTS. 

It would seem evident from the preeediiig discussion of the 
duties and the opportunities of the instructor in agriculture 
Ihat he is ]->rohal)ly the most important factor in the training of 
the youth for productive and profitable farming. 

Whether he be employed in a separate agricultural school 
or as an expert in charge of an agricultural department in a 
regular high school, the special instructor or supervisor in agri- 
cultural education should bring to the work certain qualifications 
as to preparation, experience and personality. 

He should he a Graduate of an Agricultural College. — His 
preparation should include graduation from an agricultural 
college or its equivalent. He should be familiar with and keep 
in touch with the officers and the work of the Massachusetts 
Agricultural College and Experiment Station; and he should 
keep in touch with the experiment stations in other States 
where work is being done under conditions similar to those in 
Massachusetts. 

He should 1)0 familiar with the work of the United States 
Department of Agriculture, so far as it is applicable to Mas- 
sachusetts. He should l)e capable of keeping in touch with new 
literature in ]^amphlet, periodical and book form, as it is issued, 
and to the extent that it may be applicable to his locality. He 
should be familiar with the work of organizations concerned 
with rural progress in Massachusetts, and capable of heartily 
co-operating Vvnth their officers. 

His Experience. — Preferably, such a person undertaking 
to prepare for agricultural teaching in this Commonwealth 
should have been reared on a Massachusetts farm, or on a farm 
Vt'here the agricultural operations would yield experience of 
■\-alue for work in this State. He should be a master of farming 
as a handicraft, and amply able to demonstrate the things which 
he undertook to teach; and he should be familiar with, and 



63 

be able to demonstrate tbe use of, the kinds of farm machinery 
which can be economically used on a Massachusetts farm. 

His Personality. — Since he must teach, such an instructor 
or supervisor must be effective in discipline; that is to say, 
in the handling of boys and girls. He must be prepared to meet 
people in his community pleasantly, and establish agreeable 
working relations with them. He must be prepared to maintain 
harmonious relations between his department and the other 
departments of the school, and be amenable to the authority of 
the officers responsible for the school which he serves. 

Tlie duties of such a tcacJhcr of agriculture, attached to 
either a separate agricultural school or an agricultural depart- 
ment in a regular high school, should in general be those which 
were indicated in the foregoing discussion of the activities in 
the field of part-time work in agriculture which he is to direct. 
His school year might provide, at the discretion of the school 
authorities, for service during the spring, summer and fall 
months, giving him a vacation during the winter months ; rather 
than for service during the fall, winter and spring, with summer 
months for vacation purposes. Such a program would insure 
his services throughout the growing and harvesting seasons. 

His absence during winter months would not seriously disturb 
the curriculum of the school ; on the contrary, it would make 
room for the teaching of related subjects, including manual 
training projects related to the farm, by other members of the 
staff to the lower classes, and might enable the higher classes 
to take winter short courses at the Agricultural College. Such 
a program would enable him to attend winter courses, and thus 
keep in touch with j)rogress in agricultural science, and become 
better acquainted with men engaged in research and experi- 
mental work. 

The appointment and tenure of such a supervisor should be 
under the control of the local authorities, but subject to the 
approval of the State Board. Where the supervisor is to serve a 
separate agTicultural school, as at present constituted and admin- 
istered under the Massachusetts statutes, or an agricultural de- 
partment in a regular high school, since his salary in either 
case is to be paid in part by the local community and in part by 
the State, it would probably be advisable that he should be nom- 



64 

inated by the local authorities and approved by the Board of 
Education ; and in case of dismissal for cause, it would prob- 
ably be best for such a dismissal to be approved by the Board. 

Ordinarily, the yearly term of service for such a supervisor 
should be from the first day of April of any given year to the 
first day of April of the succeeding year. Dismissal for flagrant 
offense should, of course, be immediate and without notice. 

The salary of such, a supervisor is an important consideration. 
Experience seems to show that, in order to command the services 
of a man having the technical training, practical experience and 
personality called for in the above discussion of the necessary 
qualifications of a successful supervisor, salaries ranging from 
$1,000 upwards must be paid. 

In Ontario, where salaries for teachers and specialists of every 
type are on the whole less than in the States, six supervisors, 
with advisory and teaching duties, were engaged at the begin- 
ning of a co-operative scheme between the governmental agencies 
for agricultural betterment and the local school authorities. 
These supervisors were paid at the outset, $1,000 per year. 

The Problem of Necessary Salaries is an Economic One at 
Bottom. — In order to attract to the work a supervisor of the 
type herein described, it will be necessary to make the compensa- 
tion which he is to receive as good as, or better than, that which 
is offered to him in competing lines of work. 

By competing lines of work are meant occupations to which 
his interests, his talents and his preparation might attract him. 
The following positions at least lie within the possibilities of 
the desirable graduate of an agricultural college, and therefore 
constitute competing lines of work: agTicultural management 
work (for others or for himself) ; agricultural editorial work; 
agricultural commercial work ; agricultural government work ; 
agricultural research work ; agricultural extension work ; agri- 
cultural teaching in colleges ; agricultural teaching in high 
schools ; agricultural teaching in agricultural schools ; agricul- 
tural teaching in departments in regular high schools; assistant- 
ships where valuable experience under highly specinlized super- 
vision is to be had. 

In a very exhaustive study of the preparation and salaries of 
teachei's giving instruction in agriculture in high schools, Mr. 



65 

C. H. Eobison finds that the prevailing rate of pay received 
by desirable students in agricultural colleges immediately after 
graduation is $1,200.^ 

Such a supervisor must at the present time command a salary 
at least as high as, if not higher than, the average male teacher 
in ordinary high school work. Graduates of classical colleges 
are much more abundant and available for teaching in second- 
ary schools than are men qualified to teach agriculture. 

The demands upon the teacher who is to serve as a supervisor 
of part-time agricultural work are so much more exacting than 
the demands upon the instructor in old-line training, that men 
possessing the requisite qualifications of personality and execu- 
tive ability are at a premium.- 

The salaries now paid to special teachers of agriculture of 
secondary grade are likewise significant. Mr. Eobison presents 
a table (JSTo. 41) giving the salaries of 33 agriculturists en- 
gaging in school work in the past two years. Of these, the first 
10 employed as assistants received less than $850 ; 23 received 
$900 or more; 21 more than $1,000; and 16 more than $1,200. 

The salaries now commanded by teachers giving special in- 
struction in agriculture in public high schools and other public 
secondary schools would seem to indicate that the salary of the 
supervisor described herein must be not less than $1,000, and 
must probably be more than that amount per annum, if com- 
petent men are to be secured for the work. 

1 In a thesis prepared for a doctor's degree at Columbia University, Mr. Robison gives a 
list of 179 men graduating from agricultural colleges in the school year 1007-08. This list 
shows that the salaries of over four-fifths of these men were rather evenly scattered between 
$750 and $1,200. The 21 higher-degree men received an average of $1,208.33, the prevailing 
rate being $1,200. The general average of salaries for the 1907 group was $947.50, and for the 
190S group $921.50. The lowest salary received was $450, and the highest $1,700. 

The significance of the above statistics lies in these three con.siderations: (1) that the salaries 
tabulated were commanded practicallj' on graduation day, and hence do not represent the 
added compensation which efficiency born of experience brings; (2) that the salaries tabulated 
include, possibly to an extent of more than a majority of the cases, the earnings after gradua- 
tion of men not capable of acting as supervisors of agricultural training; (3) that the salaries 
were not confined to men entering educational work. 

- The report of the National Educational Association, through its committee on salaries, 
tenures and pensions of public school teachers in the United States (1905), gives the average 
annual salary of male teachers other than principals in the secondary schools of Massachusetts 
outside of Boston as $1,269; of male teachers and principals, $1,470; of male principals, 
$2,261. 



66 



VII. 

AGRICULTURAL DEPARTMENTS IN PUBLIC HIGH 
SCHOOLS THE PRINCIPAL PRESENT NEED 
IN MASSACHUSETTS AGRICUL- 
TURAL EDUCATION. 

Tlie foregoing chapters of this report have been devoted 
largely to a description of various featuies of the work of the 
separate agricultural school and of the agricultural department 
in the public high sihool, as heing the two types of training most 
desirable for a system of agricultural education in this State. It 
is the purpose; of the present chapter to discuss the probable part 
which each may be made to play in such a system, and the special 
need of the agricultural department. 

To-day in ]\[assachusetts there are three kinds of agricidtural 
education : one for adults ; another for children ; and a third for 
pupils of high school age. 

Adult Agricultural Education. — Agricultural education suit- 
able for adults was the first to receive attention, and has been 
most elaborately developed. It now includes public exliil)itions, 
lectures and demonstrations; books, periodicals and papers; field 
meetings held on farms, movable schools and lietter-farming 
trains ; correspondence instruction and c(>llege courses. Among 
the most active agents in promoting this work for adults are the 
State Board of Agriculture and the Massachusetts Agricultural 
College. 

Elementary Agricultural Education. - — The place of agricul- 
ture in the education of children is discussed in chapter XL, 
where it is shoAvn that promising beginnings have already been 
made in teaching elementary school children certain rudiments 
of agricultural fact and practice. The State normal schools 
and interested su|)erinteudents of schools have been the most 
active agents in this work. Valuable assistance has been given 
by the Massachusetts Agricultural College. 

Secondarij Agricultural Education. — Agricultural education 
suitable for pupils of high school age is found in three forms : 



67 

the private school, of which the Mount Hermon School for 
Boys, with its elective courses in agriculture, is the most prom- 
inent example ; the public high school, with some agricultural 
instruction, of which there are said now to be twelve examples 
in this State ; and the State-aided agricultural school of strictly 
vocational character, of which there are now two examples, — 
the Smith's Agricultural School at jSTorthampton, and the Mon- 
tague Agricultural School at Montague. 

The principaJ present need, it is believed, is legislative provi- 
sion of State aid for the establishment and maintenance, in exist- 
ing high schools, of thorough-going vocational departments for 
the preparation of boys, and perhaps some girls, for Massachu- 
setts farming. In other chapters this report gives evidence that 
farming in this State offers a good future to those who have been 
properly trained for eugaging in it, and outlines a method for 
makiug agricultural education for those above fourteen years of 
age vocationally effective. 

The present law provides State aid for independent agri- 
cultural schools. This provision should be continued. But it 
is believed that this legislation is not adequate for meeting the 
immediate requirements of the State as a whole. 

Only One Eural School has become an Ar/ricriUvrnl Scliool. — 
Under the present law, only one rural school has l)een reor- 
ganized, and converted into an agricultural school, ■ — the school 
at Montague. 

But One School hullt, and that hij Bequest. ■ — • Moreover, but 
one new agricultural scliool has been established, — the school 
at Northampton. Without the Oliver Smith bequest, it is 
perfectly evident, to those who know the situation, that the 
city of ISTorthampton would not now have that institution. 

The school has drawn its students from sixteen towns outside 
of ISTorthampton, as well as from the city itself. It is in 
reality a school for a considerable district, rather than for a 
single city. 

In the natural course of events, I^orthampton, or any other 
city with a considerable industrial development, would see it- 
self well equipped for industrial training before it would, or 
perhaps could, give a thought toward the establishment of an 



68 

agricultural school for the benefit of its outlying and more or 
less scattered farming poj^ulation. 

Six Agricultural Scliools might he luarranted. — There would 
undoubtedly be ample need of the ultimate establishment in this 
State of five or six independent agricultural schools. 

Districts or Benefactors might build them. — If the burden 
of establishing such separate agricultural schools is too great to 
be assumed single-handed by most towns, it is to be hoped that 
private philanthropy, seeing the need, may be induced to supple- 
ment limited public resources. 

A group of towns may join in a district and find the under- 
taking quite within its grasp. In Essex County there is what 
appears to be a well-developed movement for the immediate 
establishment of such a school. By degrees the requisite number 
of separate schools for meeting the needs of the training such 
schools could so admirably give, may be secured. 

The State should help maintain; it should not help construct 
or equip. — It is plainly the established policy of the State to 
aid in maintaining industrial and agricultural schools, but not 
in their construction or equipment. The State must not under- 
take more than it can carry out ; and it is already evident that 
at no distant date the share of the State in meeting the cost of 
even one-half of the maintenance charges of vocational education 
will heavily tax its current resources. 

Present Need of Agricultural Depart7nents, therefore, the 
More Urgent. — Since the demand for vocational agricultural 
training of secondary grade is pressing, and the establishment of 
agricultural scJiools is likely to be long delayed, the need for 
agricultural departments is seen to be the more urgent. 

Fifty Departments for the Cost of Ten Schools. — The cost of 
establishing a vocational agricultural department in a regular 
high school would be comparatively slight, — not a tithe of the 
cost of constructing and equipping an independent agricidtural 
school. Moreover, fully fifty departments could be maintained 
for about what it would cost to maintain five large, well-equipped 
and effective agricultural schools. The provision of agricultural 
departments strongly commends itself, therefore, on the grounds 
of economy. 



69 

Departments would reach the Greatest Number. — An agri- 
cultural department close at hand, which permitted the boj to 
live at home and help with the farm work morning and night 
and on Saturdays, would be most likely to appeal to j)arents who 
were in modest circumstances. Practically all parents, however 
well-to-do or however needy they may be, are rightly reluctant 
to have their children leave home at fourteen, or even at sixteen 
or seventeen years of age. 

Many agricultural departments widely distributed through 
the State would induce the attendance of the largest number of 
pupils, and thus provide a system of agricultural education 
suited to the needs of the greatest number of farm homes. 

DejKuiments ivould demonstrate. — Surrounded by farms, 
vocational agricultural departments in high schools would at 
once enlist the motor instincts and activities of the boys from 
these farms in the carrying out, simultaneously with their school 
instruction and as a vital part of it, of practical farming proj- 
ects on their own premises. 

The best methods would be told and shown. And most boys, 
as well as most men, in agriculture as in all other productive 
pursuits, make their best progress by being told and shown, man 
to man, what to do, and why and when and how to do it. 

General Scliooling not Enongli. — Even in Massachusetts, 
where the school-going habit has been developed among the 
people at large to at least as favorable proportions as in most 
parts of the world, school instruction has had almost no direct 
bearing on the probable life work of a great number of boys 
and girls ; and to-day, except in very few instances, it yields no 
practical knowledge or skill to those boys whose severest need 
is education for efficiency in the work and affairs of modern 
farming. 

Boohs and Bidletins are not Enough. — How many of the 
rank and file of busy farmers have had the time, the opportunity 
or the inclination for learning the alphabet of agricultural 
science, — that difficult alphabet, in which the most valuable 
bulletins and treatises on modern agriculture are written ? The 
higher the aspirations of the men of agricultural knowledge, and 
the more commendable their accomplishments in the conquest of 



70 

agricultural science, the more difficult of comprehension do their 
published works become in the hands of the man hard pressed 
by the daily affairs of farming. 

The need of the hour is the need of the teacher who can sim- 
plify language, and tell the boys who are to be farmers in a 
given town or district the practical bearing of the best research 
in agriculture on their problems ; and who can show the boys, 
on their own farms and in the laboratory demonstrations at the 
school, the best methods which are applicable to Massachusetts 
conditions. It is to meet this need that a system of agricultural 
departments is proposed in this report. 

The Farm, is not Enough. — It has been said that '' The worst 
thing about farming in l!^ew England is that almost any kind of 
farmer can get a living on almost any kind of farm." Produc- 
tive farming — the farming for which additional vocational 
training is here proposed ■ — - is not eking out from the land the 
nakedest necessities of life. Productive farming is farming for 
the community, not merely for the individual ; it is economic 
farming, and as such contemplates profit in proportion to the 
service it renders the community, — in proportion to the quan- 
tity and the quality of the commodities put upon the market. 
Such farming demands the highest operative skill, the keenest 
scientific insight and the broadest outlook over the wants and the 
welfare of the community. Many men on Massachusetts farms 
to-day are doing exactly this kind of productive farming. They 
have built up their ability through long years of experience. 
They would Ix^ the best possible schoolmasters for their sons in 
this skillful work, this scientific insight and this breadth of 
outlook. 

But, just as the lawyer who must practice law is generally 
unwilling to teach it, so the productive farmer, who must meet 
the pressing demands of economic agi-icultural operations, and 
who in most cases must be at once the skilled operative, the 
scientific observer and the capable business manager, cannot 
stop to teach his boy the many things he ought to be taught in 
the years following his fourteenth birthday. 

If this is true of the farmer of exceptional ability, it is even 
more evident amonc; farmers in General throughout the Com- 



71 

nionwealtli. There is no reflection in this observation on the 
" old stock " or on the immigrant. The statement is pnt for- 
ward as a matter of fact, and shows a condition which has 
grown, and must continue more and more to grow, out of the 
exigencies of modern economic agriculture. 

If the office alone is not enough as a training school for 
modern commerce, it becomes increasingly evident that, while 
the farm must have a necessary part in agricultural education, 
as is shown in chapters IV. and V. of this report, it is not enough 
for the training of the prospective productive farmer. The 
agricultural departments would undertake to render a service 
to productive farming like that rendered the world of business 
by the public school department of commerce. 

Open Doors of Opportunity. — Mr. D. J. Crosby, specialist 
in agricultural education of the Office of Experiment Stations, 
Washington, D. C, has written that he hopes to see secondary 
agricultural education throughout the country " Open at both 
ends," ■ — ■ open at the l3eginning, so that the farm boy can enter ; 
and open at the end, so that those farm boys who desire to go 
on to higher agricultural training shall be able to do so. 

The agricultural departments, as shown in another chapter 
of this report, would admit any farm boy who had reached his 
fourteenth birthday, without regard to whether or not he could 
pass entrance examinations for admission to high school, pro- 
vided he could demonstrate his ability to profit from the agri- 
cultural instruction offered. This would open the door for the 
boy who might not be " bookish," but who might be capable of 
making excellent progress in applied science as worked out by 
the project, or part-time, method proposed in chapter V. of 
this report. 

Fuller opportunity, at the same time, would be afforded 
the boy who might be both " bookish " and " practical," for 
advancing in both agricultural and academic training. As 
stated in chapter V., 20 per cent, of the boy's time would be 
definitely reserved for broadly cultural education. If a boy 
who was training for farming valued graduation from an even 
more strongly cultural course, one that perhaps even included 
Latin or Greek, and if he were able to cover the OTOund re- 



72 

quired for sucli graduation without detriment to the vocational 
training in his agricultural course, he, too, should find wide open 
before him a door of opportunity commensurate with his ambi- 
tion and his natural powers. 

More and ]nore, agricultural science is bound to be recognized 
in units of credit for meeting college entrance requirements; 
certainly for meeting the requirements for admission to col- 
leges of agi'iculture. 

It must be evident, in short, that the agricultural departments 
in high schools herein proposed would throw open to boys from 
the farms not limited opportunities only, but opportunities for 
the most advanced agricultural education of which they might 
be capable and to which they might aspire. The fact that firm 
footing for their feet would be found at the outset through the 
immediate application of their science instruction in their home 
farm projects, would certainly be no detriment. 

Avoidance of Undue Delay. — The establishment of agri- 
cultural departments in existing high schools could not be ac- 
complished over night. Their success would depend upon 
picked men for teachers ; and the selection of such men, or their 
training, would require time and attention. Some time would 
be required, also, for enabling the local advisory committee in 
consultation with the State authorities to outline the course 
of training best suited to meet the needs of the farm boys in 
any given locality. Certain special agricultural class-room 
facilities and equipment would require some time for prepara- 
tion. 

But the time necessary for the establishment of such depart- 
ments would be comparatively brief. In one, two or three 
years it should be possible to have a reasonable number of such 
departments actively at work, and reaching most of the farm 
boys in this State who need this form of agricultural education. 
Conclusion. — Chief stress in this chapter has been laid on 
the need of agricultural departments in existing high schools, 
and the service they might be expected to render. It is recog- 
nized that a new and untried method of instruction is proposed 
in this report. There have been certain approximations to both 
the separate agricultural school and the agricultural department 



73 

in a high school, as here defined and discussed ; but nowhere 
has there been the definite and studied employment of the proj- 
ect and part-time method of training here contemplated for use 
in both the agricultural school and the agricultural department. 

While, therefore, it is believed that the system of agricultural 
schools recommended in this report will prove to be an impor- 
tant contribution to the progress of education in this Common- 
wealth, it is believed, also, that the experimental character of 
the proposed system, particularly in matters relating to the agri- 
cultural department, should be distinctly recognized. To this 
end, accordingly, the appropriation for aiding such departments 
has been restricted to $10,000 a year, — a sum sufficient to start 
a small number of such departments. 

Intense interest in the proposed system exists among farmers, 
business men and educators throughout the State with whom it 
has been discussed. Under the supervision of the Board of Edu- 
cation, the work could be subjected to the closest scrutiny, and 
would be undertaken with corresponding care. Departments 
need not be established excepting where conditions for their suc- 
cessful development were believed to exist. Every possible as- 
sistance could be given those immediately responsible for putting 
into effect the method here proposed. If the results proved to 
be disappointing, the appropriation for departments should be 
discontinued. If the results here anticipated should be realized, 
the annual appropriation could be increased and the system 
further extended whenever such action might be considered 
necessarv or desirable. 



74 



VIII. 



POSSIBLE LOCATIONS FOR AGRICULTURAL SCHOOLS OR 
DEPARTMENTS. 

Where should the schools and departments in a system of agri- 
cultural education for ]\Iassachusetts be established? 

Previously in. this report it has been stated that the establish- 
ment of five, or possibly six, separate agricultural schools might 
be warranted in Massachusetts. These might well be located at 
the most easily accessible points in each of six, readily sep- 
arable, divisions of the State which furnish the home markets 
for Massachusetts agricultural products. 

That there are six such divisions has been shown by Secre- 
tary Ellsworth in his forthcoming pamphlet, entitled '" Massa- 
chusetts, her Agricultural Resources, Advantages and Oppor- 
tunities," to which reference has been made in chapter II. His 
preliminary statement concerning these divisions is as fol- 
lows : — 

The home markets for Massachusetts farm products are confined prin- 
cipally to the 33 cities. These cities, all containing more than 13,000 
peoi)le, represent almost two-thirds of the total population of the State. 
The inhabitants thereof are wholly dependent upon the farmer for sus- 
tenance. The cities of the State lie in six groups, the locations of 
which, as previously intimated, were determined largely by the existence 
of special industrial and commercial facilities. 

1. Desirable Locations for Agricultural Schools. — If the six 
agTicultural market divisions of the State were to be followed, 
schools might be located in the divisions described by Secretary 
Ellsworth, as below shown, and for reasons based on the investi- 
gations leading to this report below given. 

(1) " The most vestern group/' says Secretary Ellsworth, " is 
that comprising the cities of Pittsfield and Xorth Adams, hav- 
ing a combined population of 45,000. These markets get all 
their dairy products and fruits and vegetables in season from 
producers of northern Berkshire." 

Pittsfield promises to he an excellent center, and the time 
seems oppoi"tune for the establishment there of a separate 



75 

agricultural school. The formation of au agricultural fair asso- 
ciation is under consideration by the Pittsfield Board of Trade, 
the local Grange and influential citizens. It has been suggested 
that the two projects might be worked out together. Some of 
the fair buildings, which otherwise would be unoccupied fully 
eleven months of the year, might be used for the school. Some 
of the school equipment and operations might contribute features 
of very great value for carrying out the educational purposes 
which the annual fairs would be intended to serve. 

Pittsfield is a trade and transportation center for the to^vns 
of Lanesborough, Dalton, Lenox, Lee, Cheshire, Berkshire and 
Hinsdale. This group of towns, with Pittsfield, has a total 
population estimated at 50,000. The population is said to be 
increasing at a rapid rate, and to be far outstripping the agri- 
cultural development of that section of the State. 

(2) "The second group," as described by Secretary Ellsworth, 
" comprises ISTorthampton, Llolyoke, Chicopee and Springfield. 
These cities lie in the lower Coimecticut Piver valley. The last 
three named are in Hampden County, and are the most popu- 
lous. The total population is 145,500. This market group 
draws heavily upon the productivity of the Connecticut valley 
for 30 miles of its length and from the hills on the east and on 
the west. The prosperous market gardeners close to the city 
limits attest to the excellent marketing advantages of this 
region." 

The Connecticut Valley now supplied. — The Smith's Agri- 
cultural School and Northampton School of Industries now in 
operation at Northampton, and previously referred to in this re- 
port, is equipped for serving a large area in the Connecticut 
valley and on the neighboring hills. Students from 16 towns 
have been enrolled for work in this school, and with but few 
exceptions have been able to reside at home, - — due to the excel- 
lence of ISTorthampton as a transportation center. 

(3) "A third group " is that made up, according to the analy- 
sis of Secretary Ellsworth, " of Worcester, Fitchburg and Maid- 
borough. The former is by several thousands the largest city, 
and no mean percentage of its people are partially self-sustain- 
ing. The combined population is 163,500. The supply for these 
markets comes mostly from the southern and eastern parts of 



76 

Worcester County. Railroads enter the cities of this group 
from twelve different directions direct from the producing sec- 
tions." 

Worcester has been discussed separately in chapter IX. of 
this report as a most desirable center for an agricultural school. 
The resources of the city are rich, the agricultural production 
of its outlying sections is large, the population conditions are 
adequate, its transportation facilities are excellent, and the 
enterprise of its local agiucultural and horticultural organiza- 
tions is noteworthy. Few communities could offer conditions 
more promising for the successful establishment and mainte- 
nance of such a school than those which would be found in 
Worcester. 

(4) "Another group of cities," indicated by Secretary Ells- 
worth, " lie along the IMerrimac River in nothern Essex County. 
Lowell, Lawrence, Haverhill and iSTewburyport make up this 
group, and afford markets for that section of the State. The 
railroads are numerous, but do not enter into the movement of 
]UT)duce to these markets to any extent, most of it being drawn 
over the excellent nuicadam roads with which this section is 
admirably supplied. Gloucester, on Cape Ann, is a city of 
nioi'e than 25,000 people, which requires its portion of soil 
])roducts. It is known best as a port and market for the fishing 
industry." 

In Essex County several locations have been suggested, and 
it appears that public sentiment has been thoroughly aroused, 
by the Associated Boards of Trade and other organizations 
throughout the entire county, in favor of the early establish- 
ment of one agricultural school, and ultimately of at least two 
such schools. 

A. Danvers has been suggested as a center for such a school. 
The section about Danvers may be described as pre-eminently 
devoted to market gardening. The district served might well 
include Lynn, Marblehead, Salem, Peabody, Beverly and Dan- 
vers itself. It is urged that day students living at home could 
attend school at this center from points as far north as Tops- 
field. Boxford, I^orth Andover and even Haverhill, more cheaply 
than they could board, and have margins of time for testing 
daily at home the teachings of the school. 



77 

B. The Merrimac valley, it has been urged, would furnish a 
desirable center. Agi'iculture in the Merrimac valley section 
is rich and varied. It embraces general farming; fruit grow- 
ing, including peaches and strawberries ; and market gardening. 
The district served might well include Andover, North Andover. 
Boxford, Georgetown, Groveland, Lawrence, Methuen and 
Haverhill. Towns even as distant as Danvers, Topsfield, jSTew- 
burjport and Salisbury would not, it is believed, be too far 
away for the attendance of day students. 

C. Topsfield also has been suggested as a center, owing to 
the gift of a valuable farm in that town to the Essex Agricul- 
tural Society for educational purposes. This farm would oifer 
admirable field facilities for purposes of instruction. The soil, 
especially in its diversified topographical contours, is typical 
of the farming land in the immediately surrounding section. 

Against this point as a center for an agricultural school has 
been urged difficulty of access. Topsfield has no electric car 
service, and is crossed by but a single steam railway line. It 
might be that an enrollment of day students could not be as- 
sured sufficient to warrant its selection as a center. 

D. Beverly, or some other spot on the JSTorth Shore, has been 
suggested as a center. It has been urged that an agricultural 
school might be established and equipped by subscriptions from 
wealthy residents, and that a district for its maintenance might 
well be made up of Beverly, Wenham, Hamilton, Essex, Man- 
chester, Gloucester, Eockport and perhaps Ipswich. Such a 
school, it is urged, should provide instruction in general farm- 
ing, and should also give particular attention to landscape 
gardening. 

It is said that the ISTorth Shore country seats demand much 
skilled agricultural and horticultural work of all kinds, and that 
for meeting this demand the establishment and maintenance by 
the means above named of a somewhat specialized agricultural 
school would be warranted. There appears to be no little merit 
in this proposal, and the transportation conveniences would make 
a school in this locality accessible to a large district. 

(5) ''The cities of the fifth group," as described by Secretary 
Ellsworth, " are rather widely separated, but, as they are respon- 
sible for considerable agricultural activity of a particular sec- 



78 

tion, they may be taken as constituting a market for that section. 
These cities are Brockton in northwestern Plymouth, Taunton, 
Fall River and N"ew Bedford in Bristol, and Woonsocket, Paw- 
tucket, Central Falls and Providence in the State of Rhode 
Island. The combined population of these cities in 1905 was 
500,000, which was nearlj^ as great as that of Boston, 

'' This, however, cannot bo taken as a true measure of the 
market for Massachusetts farmers of this section, since the 
Rhode Island markets get the larger portion of their produce 
from Rhode Island soil. The Massachusetts cities named above 
have a population nearly equal to the Rhode Island cities, and, 
with the exception, perhaps, of Fall River, get all their native 
food stuffs from jMassachusetts farms. Transportation facilities 
are excellent, no less than thirty lines of railroads entering the 
cities of the group. Probably most of the garden truck is taken 
to market over the highways." 

The Faunce Demonstration Farm at Sandirich might serve 
as a nucleus for a separate agricultural school for the Cape Cod 
section. The real estate of the Faunce Demonstration Farm, 
when bequeathed in 1909 for its present use, consisted of two 
houses, a barn, a greenhouse, about 8 acres of cleared land, with 
50 acres of woodland adjoining and other woodland at a dis- 
tance. With this real estate there also was received a fund of 
about $20,000. The whole property was left as a memorial to 
Dr. Robert II. Faunce, who had died suddenly the year before, 
by his mother, in the hands of four of her personal friends as 
trustees, with wide discretionary powers, but with her wish well 
understood that the estate was to be used to encourage Cape Cod 
agriculture. Demorjstration work in fruit and vegetable grow- 
ing and in ]H»ultry farming has been energetically undertaken. 
This establishment M-as described very fully by the " Boston 
Herald " of Nov. 27, 1010, in an illustrated article, entitled 
" The Farm wiihout Frills." 

The conditions at Sandwich are so closely typical of the Cape 
as a whole, and transportation facilities are such, that Sandwich 
naturally suggests itself as a desirable center for an agricultural 
school. Agricultural production in that section has been sorely 
neglected, products which might well be grown at home being 
brought in for supplying local needs from the Boston markets. 



79 

The importance of Sandwich as a center is expected to be greatly 
enhanced by the completion of the new Cape Cod Canal. 

The people of the commnnity, particularly the school boys, 
have responded to the influence of the Faunce Demonstration 
Farm. The superintendent of the farm, as this report is being 
written, is instructing special classes of high school students 
who are desirous of the training this farm and its manager are 
prepared to provide. 

(6) "The sixth group," discussion of which Secretary Ells- 
worth deferred until the last, because of its magnitude, is that 
which, he says, " for present purposes may be called the Boston 
market. Fifteen cities and about as many large towns may be 
included in this group. It has its center at Faneuil Hall, and 
radiates for 10 miles north, south and west. Within the circum- 
ference of this territory there dwell more than one-third of all 
the people in the Commonwealth. Well may Boston be termed 
' the Hub; ' it is truly the center of this enormous market." 

The Sulmrhs of Boston. — It is well known that the green- 
house and market-garden interests in the vicinity of Boston have 
reached enormous development, and it has been suggested that 
a special school for training producers of market-garden and 
greenhouse crops might well be established in one of the suburbs 
of this city. 

Such a school might materially diifer in its course of study 
from the other agricultural schools, and form a very important 
part of a system of agricultural education for the State. Stu- 
dents who desired to specialize in these branches of agricultural 
production might, at the end of the first two or three years in 
any of the other agricultural schools or agricultural departments, 
possible locations for which are hereafter discussed, be trans- 
ferred to this school for a one-year or two-years finishing course; 
that is to say, such a school might well be organized for provid- 
ing a short course of highly specialized instruction for boys of 
sixteen or more years of age. 

2. Possible Locations for Agricultural Departments in Exist- 
ing High Schools. — Local conditions should be strong factors 
in determining whether or not the establishment of an agricul- 
tural department would be advisable at ai]y given point. 

There is throughout the State a very general excellence of 



80 

transportation facilities. When, for example, possible locations 
for the proposed Massachusetts College centers were being se- 
lected, it was found that 30 such centers could be so placed that 
92 per cent, of the school jjopulation of the State would live 
within the range of a five-cent fare by steam or trolley from 
these centers, and that six per cent, more would live within the 
range of a ten-cent fare. Transportation facilities are likely to 
be found favorable at most points which might be suggested. 

In choosing locations for agricultural departments in high 
schools, some account should undoubtedly he taken of the tend- 
ency of agriculture to develop more strongly with reference to 
local market demands than with reference to any local peculiar- 
ities of soil or traditional production, — a tendency which has 
been referred to by Secretary Ellsworth. Strong or distinctive 
home-market centers for agi-icultural products might well, as in 
the cases of the agricultural schools, furnish the most desirable 
locations for agricultural departments. 

Following are centers — but not always market centers — 
which have been suggested as likely to be found desirable for 
the location of vocational agricultural departments in existing 
high schools : — 

(1) Great Barrington might be found desirable as a center, 
so far as the farming interests and transportation facilities are 
concerned. Farmers conversant with Great Barrington condi- 
tions have estimated that an annual enrollment of 20 farm boys 
could be assured, if such a department should be established, 
with an ultimate enrollment of probably not fewer than 50. 
The surrounding towns have no manufacturing, but contain 
many estates of summer residents and many typical western 
Massachusetts farms. These towns now send a numlier of tui- 
tion students to the Great Barrington high school. 

An agricultural department at this center might be found very 
servicealde, therefore, to a considerable surrounding territory, 
as well as to Great Barrington itself. Instances are given of 
students, living at home, but attending school in Pittsfield 
from points as far south as Stockbridge. The distance from 
Stockbridge to Pittsfield is of course much greater than the 
distance from Stockbridge to Great Barrington. It has been 



81 

iirc'ed that, with an agricultural school at Pittsfield and an 
agricultural department at Great Barrington, the Berkshire 
section of the State would be well supplied with means for the 
agricultural education of boys fourteen or more years of age. 

(2) West Springfield has been suggested as a favorable spot 
for a strong agricultural department course in market gardening 
as well as in general agriculture. There would be abundance 
of illustrative work going on within easy reach, and the trans- 
portation facilities for day students would bo all that could be 
desired. 

(3) Palmer might be another desirable center. This is a 
town of about 8,000 inhabitants, and is made up of several vil- 
lages. It is an important transportation center, being inter- 
sected by several steam railway lines and served by numerous 
electric car lines radiating from Palmer village as a center. 
A large farming area might thus be readily accommodated. 

Across the river from the village is a very large State institu- 
tion, with extensive farms and varied farming operations. 
Much help is there employed, and practical work might there 
be had by boys from village homes who desired to be trained 
for farm life and work. The superintendent of this institution 
has expressed great interest in the possible establishment of an 
agricultural department in the Palmer high school, and might 
be relied upon to do everything possible for enhancing the value 
of its practical instruction. 

Palmer has three outlying manufacturing villages, in each of 
which the mill propoi'ty includes farming land. The agents of 
the mills have expressed considerable interest in the possibility 
of an agricultural department in the Palmer high school. One 
of them would contribute forestry demonstration work ; the 
others would render any assistance which might be found prac- 
ticable. 

(4) Sandwich, if the Faunce Demonstration Farm were not 
developed into a separate agricultural school, would be ad- 
mirably suited for an agricultural department. The farm would 
provide excellent means for demonstration and practice work at 
the school, since the farm is but a few steps from the high school 
building. 



82 

(5) Kingston would be another favorable point. Tbongh 
Kingston itself might not assnre an enrollment sufficient to war- 
rant the establishment of such a department at the local high 
school, the transportation facilities are such that a department 
located at Kingston might serve a considerable territory, includ- 
ing the towns of Pljauouth, Carver, Plvmpton, Halifax, Silver 
Lake and Duxbury. 

Kingston no doubt has been suggested owing to the keen local 
interest in agricultural improvement which has already been 
aroused. There is a model farm operated by a private owner 
in the vicinity of the high school, which woiild afford proper 
demonstration facilities. 

( G) By field has been suggested as a good center for an agri- 
cultural department. Dummer Academy is located in this town, 
and owns a farm fairly typical of the land in this section. It 
has been suggested that the town authorities, acting with the 
officers of Dummer Academy, might utilize the academy farm 
and a portion of the academy buildings for the establishment of 
such a department. Byfield has electric car service as well as 
steam, and day students from jSTewbury, Georgetown, Rowley 
and Ipswich might there be accommodated. 

(7) Walpole is another location which has been suggested for 
a department. Three very interesling farms, one a purely 
investment proposition, one where clean milk is produced under 
exceptionally good conditions, and another where an undertak- 
ing is under way for developing a farm which shall grow all 
its own grain as well as roughage, would afford very unusual 
illustrative facilities, not too far distant. Walpole has both 
steam and electric railway service, and a department in the 
Walpole high school might well serve a considerable surround- 
ing section. 

(8) Petersham is another center Avhich has been suggested. 
A central school building, costing $7^,000, has been given to 
the town. In this are accommodated all of the grades of the 
local schools, including the high school. In order that agri- 
cultural instruction might be given, a small greenhouse was 
erected and a small tract of land for out-door work was pro- 
vided. The school has already taken for its name the " Peters- 
liam Ati-ricnltural Iliah School." 



83 

3. Procedure for choosing Locations for Vocational Agri- 
cultural Schools. — Other desirable locations for both agviciil- 
tiiral schools and agricultnral departments will undonbtedly be 
bronght to view. The lists above given simply make record of 
those possible centers which have most readily singled them- 
selves out, owing to certain obvions, and, as a rule, peculiarly 
advantageous, local conditions. 

ISTo serious work could be expected of any community in the 
direction of a definite canvass of its specific requirements and 
possibilities, i]i the absence of legislation fixing the general 
policy of the State as to the desirability of establishing a sys- 
tem of agricultural schools throughout the Commonwealth. 
Such legislation might be expected to follow the submission of 
this report. For those conducting the preliminary investiga- 
tions leading to this report to have urged such canvasses would 
have been to enter the field of propaganda, — a field construed 
to be foreign to the present purpose. 

In the event of favorable action by the Legislature on the 
establishment of the system of vocational agricultural schools 
recommended in this report, the procedure for choosing a loca- 
tion for a school or a department would probably be somewhat 
as follows : — 

(1) A local committee interested in the subject might peti- 
tion the Board of Education for a conference. Such a commit- 
tee might be the regular school committee, acting through the 
superintendent of schools ; or it might be a group of interested 
citizens, such as members of a grange or of a board of trade. 

(2) The conference might be expected to result {a) in a 
careful canvass of the local farming conditions and the local 
market demands for agricultural products; and (6) in the 
tentative formulation of a course of training which appeared 
to bo suited to the farming needs of the particidar locality. 

(3) It might then be advisable that a careful census of the 
local school population should be made, for the purpose of 
estimating the number of boys just approaching the fourteenth 
birthday or just past it, who would enroll in a school which 
should provide such a course of training as that tentatively 
formulated. 

(4) With the list of prospective students in hand, the next 



84 

step would probably be to secure assurauce from the parents 
of those students of willingness to co-operate heartily with the 
school in carrying- out the programme of part-time work, which 
is believed 1o be essential to the proper conduct of the proposed 
type of agricultural education. 

(5) Assured of the necessary home farm co-operation, and 
an adequate enrollment, the next natural steps would be: (a) 
consideration of suitable land, buildings and equipment, and 
their probable cost; (h) the availability <d' suitable teachers, and 
their probalde cost; and (c) the probal)le cost of maintenance, 
other ihan the cxj^ense for ofHcers of instruction and adminis- 
tration. 

If a dejiartment in a high school were contemplated, the aljove 
|>r(!l»l('ms (if id) ^uital)le quarters and equipuient, (h) instruction 
and {(■) miscellaneous necessary umintena.nce cost woidd be 
much simplilied. The attitude of the local high school ofiicers 
and tea(diers Avould previously have been ascertained when the 
]iro]>i)se<1 (mpui'sc of training was formulated. 

((')) With all the needs definitely known, ways and means of 
providing funds and election or appointment of official local 
authorities for the cstal)lishment of the school, or department, 
woidd be the next natural objects of attention. 

A. Action might he speedy and the problems simple, if the 
town or cily Avere to provide the school for itself. 

B. Action might be slow and the ]U'oblems more difficult, if 
the school were to be provided Ity a district of several cities or 
towns, or cities ami towns. 

f. All would must readily be accomplished, if a private 
donor, or grou]) of donors, should ^'irovide the necessary plant. 
The Oliver Siuith fund of $310,000 was a great aid in estab- 
lishing the agricultural school at ISTorthampton ; as was the 
Faunce liequesl in establishing the Faunce Demonstration Farm 
at Sandwich, and the resultant agricultural instruction during 
part of tlie year now given high school students in that town. 

In addition to the suggested I^ortli Shore school which it is 
thought might Iw luiilt and equipped by private donors, it is 
understood tha' another project, somewhat of the Sandwich type, 
is likely to be provided for at an early date by private gift. 



85 

Few benefactions are likely to be more permanently useful 
than modest gifts and bequests of the Faunee type, which would 
provide desirable school equipment at many points for the more 
practical elements of the agricultural education of the boys and 
girls w^ho expect to live their lives and do their work on Massa- 
chusetts farms. If large discretionary powers were lodged with 
the trustees, local school authorities or the Board of Education, 
every interest of future progress would be served, as well as the 
obvious present need, by such benefactions. 

(7) Finally, it may be said that, since the schools proposed 
would receive State aid for their maintenance, subject to ap- 
])roval by the Board of Education, the Commissioner of Educa- 
tion and those representing him might be expected to render, at 
all stages of the proceedings, every possible assistance to any 
local community which desired to establish the tyj)es of agricul- 
tural education proposed by this report. 



86 



IX. 

KECOMMENDATION WITH REGARD TO AGRICULTURAL 
EDUCATION FOR WORCESTER. 

Ill accordance with the provisions of cha])ter 108 of the lie- 
solves of 1910, the investigation leading to this report consid- 
ered the '" practicability and desirability of establishing a farm 
school in the city of Worcester in which instruction may bo 
given, free, in the raising of fruits, vegetables, flowers, grains, 
plants and trees, and in the care of doiiK stic animals, and in 
v,-hicli similar iiistrnction suitable to their years may be given 
to children.'' 

It will be remembered that the 1005 ]\rassachusctts State 
census showed that the agricultural produce of Worcester Couuty 
was re])orted as $14,27!»,000, and of the city of W-^orcester alone 
as $1,401,000. While the second city in po]nilati()n, AVorces- 
ter ranked tirst of the cities and towns in ihc \-alue of its agri- 
cultural piYxlucts. 

The farm ])rodu('ts of AVorcester are widely varied and arc 
readily marketed. The long slojies which characterize the out- 
lying land are found to be remarkably favorable for fruit, 
particularly for apple growing; dairy and ]X)ultry products hold 
n strong ])osition; market gardening is highly promising. 

AVorcester has two important and very acti^•e organizations 
in its agricultural and horticultural societies. The city has 
made a most commendable beginning in trade school work, 
and the rounding out of its system of vocational training of 
secondary grade might well take the form of a strong separate 
agricultural school. The resources of th(^ city and the impor- 
tance of its farming interests would fully warrant the estab- 
lishment and maintenance of such a school. 

It is lielieved that the provisions proposed in this report for 
meeting the needs of the State at large for a system of voca- 
tional agricultural education of secondary grade would meet 
the requirements of AA^')rcester, and that, therefore, special leg- 
islation for this ]')articular city should not 1)0 herein ]n'oposed. 



87 



AGRICULTURE AS A PHASE OF LIBERAL EDUCATION IN 
THE HIGH SCHOOLS OF MASSACHUSETTS. 

It is appropriate that something should he said in this report 
with respect to the study of agriculture as a part of the program 
of the so-called liberal education, to which our school system 
has been for the most part devoted. 

There is an active movement in secondary education looking 
to more effective organization of subject matter and method for 
the purposes of liberal or cultural education. In this movement 
it is natural that many persons should look upon agriculture as 
a promising and attracti\'e field of secondary school study, 
especially for rural high schools. For this purpose it presents 
several as|)ects. 

1. Agricultural Lands and People. — In the economic life 
of all the centuries, agriculture has played an important part. 
The control of the fertile lands in the great valleys and plains 
has made and unmade nations. Political organization has in 
all times been greatly affected by the owmership of land and by 
the kind of agriculture practiced. 

In our own century territorial division of labor plays an 
important part, with the result that one kind of farm industry 
monopolizes the lower half of the Mississippi valley ; another, 
the warm valleys of California; another, eastern Asia and still 
another, the ])lnins of Canada. 

To the student of the play of social forces, the distribution 
of population along agricultural lines is a fascinating theme. 
One can read with intense interest of the effects of occupations 
on the social life of the peoples of the prairies and the tropics, 
of the inhabitants of the great steppes of Eussia and of the 
small cultivators of France and Italy. 

2. Agricultural Science and Invention. — Especially inter- 
esting as themes for study are the transitions which the nine- 
teenth and twentieth centuries have brought into agriculture. 
The inventions of science and the evolution of machinery, sub- 
stituting animal strength and natural forces for human brawn 



and sinew, have increased agricultnral production, have ex- 
tended human prosperity, and have made the farm a field 
wherein scientific knowledge finds abundant application. 

Many a scientist has, within the last half-centurj, enriched 
humanity by his contributions to efi'ective farm production. 
The work of our own national government in agricultural re- 
search and in spreading a knowledge of approved methods con- 
stitutes a most cheering sign of governmental activity. 

It is evident that, along these and allied lines, it is possible 
to build up a field of study which as a part of liberal educa- 
tion would easily rank with certain subjects now taught with 
great eft'ort in the public high schools of rural connnunitics. 

3. Science Laboratory lUustrations from Agriculture. ■ — 
Agriculture mnst increasingly be considered as a field of apjdied 
science. Physical and commercial geography, botany, zoology, 
bacteriology, physiology, chemistry, economics, have numerous 
important applications in agriculture, and many of these appli- 
cations are so concrete and simple as to constitute excellent lab- 
oratory illustrations. 

It is not strange that seekers for more satisfactory methods 
of teaching science should turn preferably to agriculture for 
suggestion and material. It has l)ecome more and more evi- 
dent that science cannot be very effectively taught to secondary 
students strictly in its " pure " form. Children of the adoles- 
cent stage of development apparently respond more satisfactorily 
to that science teaching which begins with apjdications and con- 
crete cases, and then merges into generalizations, principles and 
laws. We know that this is the historic order in the evolution of 
scientific knowledge, and it is not imiu-ol)al)le that in the main 
the pedagogic order must follow the historic order. 

In the high school attempts are l)eing made in many places to 
organize general science for first or second year instruction. 
This course consists in some instances merely of to^iics selected 
from vai'ious sciences; in others it is based on subjects, like 
physical gen<:ra])hy, which involve principles and applications 
from many sciences. 

A more satisfactory procedure, in the view of many cdncators. 
will be to take the subject of agi'icnltnre, abounding in direct 



89 

and practical applications from many scientific fields, and to 
organize a course of instruction in whicli the pupil will advance 
from concrete experience to an appreciation of underlying scien- 
tific principles, and also at every step become cognizant of the 
real significance of the subject in promoting personal and social 
well-being. An able presentation of secondary school science 
of this kind recently appeared from the United States Depart- 
ment of Agriculture (Experiment Station Eecord, September, 
1910). 

The unsatisfactory results not infrcqiicutly obtained from the 
study of abstract mathematics and formalized physics seem 
to justify the belief that agriculture can be used to advantage 
as a means of approach to science, in a scheme for liberal edu- 
cation in secondary schools. 

1. Agriculture and Wliolesome Living. — The conception of 
modern liberal education involves to an increasing extent a study 
of social conditions and of the factors that make for wholesome 
personal and community living. 

We are in the midst of a reaction against the movement to 
the city, and students of social economy are becoming more and 
more convinced that the development of sound citizenship, as 
well as of sound physique, as a nation, is dej-endcnt on a large 
agricultural population. 

The study of agriculture as a field of human activity involves 
constant reference to the social characteristics of rural com- 
munities, and to the means for the better development of desir- 
able pursuits. One important question relates to the bearing 
on physical health of rural life and its occupations. 

5. Agriculture and tJie Educational Values of Concrete Ex- 
perience. — ^ Modern education is developing a wider and better 
psychological outlook. Education in the past has been identified 
with instruction given in schools ; and school training has, owing 
to the force of circumstances, been an education by means of 
books and wi-iting, modified in recent years by more or less 
laboratory experience. Modern pedagogy, on the other hand, 
maintains that academic teaching can be effective only as it 
builds on a ]»:Tsis of concrete experience, obtained by a thorough 
contact with the realities of life. 



90 

Jjet'ore the development of modern eities and the resulting 
industrial conditions, a large majority of growing boys and girls 
had aljundant opportunity to share in productive occupations, to 
participate in the natural sports of childhood and to acquire 
industrial experience, simply through contact with their environ- 
ment. It seems to be biologically true that this basal experience 
is necessary, as antecedent to the form of education we call 
academic. 

C. Some AgrlcuUurc ahnod Indispensable to Sound Educa- 
tion. — Manual training and laboratory work iii science have 
been undertaken jiartly as a means to realize this experience. 
Both are necessarily nuide ai-tificial by the cramped conditions 
under which the}^ must be conducted. Agriculture offers a 
peculiar opportunity for a more extended and satisfying field, 
wherein this basal experience may be acquired. 

It must be noted that this argument has no reference to voca- 
tional training. In fact, it might be urged from the stand])(iint 
of liberal education that persons destined for the professions 
and learned callings stand in greatest need in their earlier years 
of broad experience with the soil, with dcmiestic animals and 
with the conditions of production in nature. In many commu- 
nities a certain nundjer of hours per week de\'oted to agricultural 
production, whether in school gardening or in the more complex 
farmir.g aetivi(i(>s. may easily be regarded as an almost indis- 
pensable }»a]'t of a liberal education, when one takes into account 
the conditions involved in modern life. 

7. Agricultural Tcxt-hoolcs for llcadiny Courses. — The alxivc 
considerations serve to define to some extent the part which 
agricultui'c ]iiay ])lny in a system of liberal education. 

In hundreds of high schools of the Ignited States descriptive 
courses in agriculture are now offered. They are based on many 
excellent text-books which have a])]H'ared. and the instruction 
often consists nniinly in guiding the reading of the pupils. If 
the teacher himself be interestetl in the larger economic aiid 
scientific aspects of modern agricidture, as well as in its historic 
evolution, he can make the subject one of intense interest, even 
without laboratory demonstration or field experience. 

Much of our high school education must still be obtained fr<im 
text-books, and the work described al)ove oft'ers surclv as attrac- 



91 

five a subject of study as ancient history, text-book science as 
sometimes still taught, or mathematics. 

8. Agricultural Manuals for Science Laboratories. — jMany 
schools are ambitious to go farther, and in a somewhat different 
direction. They prefer not to treat agriculture in its brond geo- 
graphical or historic aspects, but to use it as a means of introduc- 
ing some notions of science. 

Here, again, many excellent books and manuals are avail- 
able, and the opportunities for laboratory illustration may be 
easily supplied. In fact, a most valuable line of experimenta- 
tion may be followed with the scantiest of materials and equip- 
ment, such as a farmer might often possess. The skilled and 
enthusiastic teacher is able in this way to make agriculture not 
only a means of general culture, but a most valuable means of 
ap])roach to the more abstract sciences. 

9. Agriculture and Enlarged Educational Opportunitj/. — A 
few schools have gone farther still. They have, by individual 
or joint effort, carried out certain productive enterprises on land 
in their ]^ossession. They have engaged in gardening, and in 
some instances have performed experiments with certain forms 
of live stock. The work has been made the center of correla- 
tion, for manual training, commercial arithmetic and science. 
The social significance of co-operative effort has been revealed, 
and a new spirit with reference to country life evoked. 

This work, while not confessedly industrial, does serve a 
valuable vocational purpose, in that it gives something of the 
ideal and outlook which ultimately constitute a large element in 
vocational success. But the contributions to liberal education 
of the schools in which this form of work has been developed 
are unmistakable. The widening horizon of the pupil, his 
greater sympathy with the prosaic occupations of life, and his 
growing appreciation of the ])ossibilities of art and science ap- 
plied in every-day callings, tend at every step to render him 
a person of power and to add to his possibilities of growth. 

There are educators who believe that such a reorganization 
of the program of liberal education, as here described, whereby 
special studies and practices shall lead into larger local, indus- 
trial and social activities, constitutes the greatest o])]iortunity 



92 

of the future for our schools. Aarieulture, as the occupation of 
half the American population and an important portion of the 
people of ]\Iassachusetts, is an especially invitinji; iiehl. 

10. Motives of Liberal Education now Doniinant. — The 
above types of agricultural education are all controlled by the 
motives dominant in liberal education. It is not intended that 
they shall be determined by the conditi(»ns and necessities of 
vocational education. It is desirable that, when the ends of 
liberal education are being sought, only incidental consideration 
should be given to the industrial significance of the means em- 
ployed. Nevertheless, it must be apparent that all the above 
methods of instruction, even when based solely on the text- 
l)0(ik, have souie influence on vocational skill. 

Success in one's calling dcjtends on something more than 
skill, and capacity to a])ply science and art to productive ends; 
it involves social outlook, wider sympathies and the ideals which 
actuate life. While the al>ove forms of education cannot be 
called vocational, the}' nevertheless should contribute ideals 
and appreciation, — important elements in the success of those 
youths who ultimately turn to agriculture as an occupation. 

The study of agriculture above described should, so far as 
State encouragement and support are concerned, stand in the 
same position as the study of foreign languages, history, mathe- 
matics, science and all subjects traditionally associated with 
liberal education. It should not be aided by the State, as though 
it were jiart of a system of vocational education. 



93 



XI. 

AGRICULTURE AS A PHASE OF LIBERAL EDUCATION IN 
THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS OF MASSACHUSETTS.' 

Part I. 

The Present Status. 
While there is as yet no systematic or general recognition 
of agriculture in the program of the elementary public schools 
of the State, enough has been done in teaching this subject to 
show that, within the limits of the capacity of the children, such 
instruction is entirely practicable, and that the results justify 
an extension of this kind of work. Even in one-room rural 
schools, as at Hinsdale and Peru, teachers guided and directed 
by capable and skillful supervision have overcome apparent 
limitations, and have given boys ranging from twelve to four- 
teen years of age a knowledge of the best methods and actual 
practice in the raising of certain staple vegetables. An example 
of one of the projects that has been found most feasil)le and 
satisfactory is given as Part 11. of this chapter. 

Some Definite Be suits. 
The instruction in agriculture in the elementary schools 
has led to a general use of the leaflets and bulletins issued by 
the United States Department of x\griculture, by the State 
Poard of Agriculture and by the Massachusetts Agricultural 
College. Xot only do the boys in connection with their school 
projects read with interest and appreciation these bulletins, 
Imt the school becomes a medium through which such informa- 
tion on the best methods of culture is brought into the com- 
munity itself. Farmers have thus become acquainted with 
approved methods of cultivating certain crops, and use such 
information in their own practice. One community, for ex- 
ample, has learned the value of the formalin treatment for 
scab in potatoes, the best and cheapest combinations for ferti- 

1 Prepared by Deputy Commissioner Orr. 



94 

lizers, and the use of the Bordeaux mixture for the prevention 
of potato blight. 

Besides these economic results, an increased interest in and 
appreciation of the school have l)een developed among the 
people. It has been possible to introduce in such rural schools 
other practical projects in dressmaking and cooking, in which 
undertakings the girls of the upper grammar grades have 
shown efficiency and ability. In these and other ways help- 
ful relations have been established between the school, and the 
a]'ts of the farm and home. In the schools where such exer- 
cises have been introduced with success, it has been found that 
the boys acquire added interest in school work along all lines. 
The direct use made of penmanship, arithmetic, composition, 
bookkeeping, drawing and manual training has resulted in an 
impro^"ed quality of work in those branches. 

The Value of Elementary Agriculture. 

Instruction in elementary agriculture in the upper grammar 
gTades has a direct value in itself, because it contributes to the 
prosperity of the farming community by aiding in the intro- 
duction of improved methods. 

Teachers, by means of sucli courses, have been able to in- 
crease the interest among their pupils in the work and the 
activities of the farm. One may hope that, through such influ- 
ences, boys may be induced to remain in the countr}^ districts ; 
but sufficient data are not as yet at hand to demonstrate that 
elementary agriculture in the schools accomplishes such a result. 
It will be agreed that it is highly desirable to make use of all 
possible means to check the present excessive tendency toward 
the city. 

The work in agriculture in a rural school opens up a way for 
helpful co-operation between the school on the one hand, and 
the home and the farm on the other. One of the best oppor- 
tup.ities for a]>]^lying the teaching of the school is when a boy 
secures a plot of land in the home garden or farm, and cultivates 
it according to the best methods. Such an undertaking should 
be carried out as a business enterprise, an account kept of re- 
ceipts and expendituiTs, and a statement made at the close of 
the season which shall show the balance of profit or loss. 



95 

Courses in elementary agriculture furnish a preparation for 
the direct vocational work in schools of higher grade. Pupils 
who have carried out one or more garden enterprises have ac- 
quired some knowledge of elementary methods in farming, and 
some information regarding the vegetable raised, soil, weather 
conditions, effects of fertilizer, heat, light and moisture. They 
thus come to the more advanced work with a large body of 
experience, which the secondary school teacher may utilize to 
advantage. 

Agencies to Promote Elementary Agriculture. 

1. Nature Study. — In the early years of the school life of 
the pupil he is led to observe plant and animal life, and gains 
a considerable body of experience relating to the phenomena 
of weather, soils and local natural history. When elementary 
instruction in agriculture has been thoroughly established and 
systematized, it will be possible to direct and shape nature 
s1udy so as to give it more definite aims and purposes than at 
present, and at the same time to retain the quality in that study 
which makes for appreciation and enjoyment of nature. 

2. School Gardens. — The school garden is winning a place 
in the public schools of the State. Through the undertakings 
involved in gardening, the pupil gains experience, knowledge 
and skill in certain processes connected with farming. It is 
desirable that the school-garden work should be so directed 
as to give the pupil a definite task, in accomplishing which he 
must overcome real difficulties in the soil, learn to protect his 
crop against insect pests and against untoward weather condi- 
tions, and finally secure "a tangible and measurable product. 
The school garden may thus closely approximate actual farm- 
ing conditions. The normal schools of the State, particularly 
at Xorth Adams and Hyannis, are giving serious attention to 
school gardening of this character. Use is being made in 
this activity of the motives that underlie social and collective 
action, while opportunity is afforded for wholesome rivalry and 
for desire for individual excellence. 

3. Potato and Corn Cluhs. — Under the auspices of the Mas- 
sachusetts Agi'icultural College, a large number of boys in dif- 
ferent parts of the State have been organized into societies for 



96 

raising certain staples in accordance with the best scientific 
methods. Under the leadership and direction of members of 
the facnlty of the Massachnsetts Agrienltural College, a wide- 
spread interest in agricnltnre has been developed. Seed of 
approved quality is distributed to the members of these clubs, 
and full directions are given regarding culture and harvesting. 
Exhibits are held at the close of the S( ason under the auspices 
of local granges or other organizations. Prizes are awarded 
for the best results.* By these means ihe l)(>ys are stimulated, 
by emulation and friendly rivalry, to ])ut both skill and in- 
dustry into their individual undertakings. Some notable 
results have been secured through this movement, in the culture 
of both corn and ]iotatoes. 

4. SiU))V}cr Courses. — The Massachusetts Agricultural Col- 
lege, by its sunnner courses for the training of teachers, by its 
conferences on rural conditions and by the travelling school of 
instruction, in which use is made of the train and trolley ser- 
vice of the State, is doing valualilc work in stimulating an in- 
terest in farming and in spreading a knowledge of scientific 
method among teachers, 

5. TJie Work of tJie Board of Ediicnlion. — An agent of the 
Board of Education is giving a large jiart of his time and atten- 
tion to the encoui'agement and direction of teachers and super- 
intendents in the establishment and conduct of elementary 
work in agriculture. Under his direction a manual is being 
prepared which gives directions for carrying out a numlier of 
projects in agriculture. This publication furnishes detailed 
and specific instructions, whereby superintendents and teachers 
will l^e enalded to cenduct classes in the different projects in- 
telligently and effectively. In Part II. of this chapter a brief 
description of this manual, and an example of one of the projects 
are given. 

Pron'siODs for Extension and Development. 
In order that elementary agriculture in the grammar grades 
may be carried on with success, it is necessary that teachers 
should receive some training for the work. Such preparation may 
be given in several ways. The manual to which reference has 
already been made should enable an alert, progressive teacher, 



97 

when guided Lj lier superintendeiit, to carry out with success 
certain undertakings in agi'iculture. The normal schools and 
the summer school at the Massachusetts Agricultural College 
are already rendering service by training their students for the 
work which falls to a teacher in a rural school, and are in some 
instances giving direct instruction in the processes of farming. 
It is important that superintendents who are in charge of 
schools in the country should inform themselves on elementary 
agriculture. Guidance and help from the superintendent are 
important factors iu promoting the efficiency of a teacher in 
this field of instruction. It has been suggested that the Board 
of Education might well consider the question of securing a 
grant of money from which payments might be made to the 
smaller towns in order that the salaries of teachers who are 
making a success of the work in agi'iculture and in other prac- 
tical branches might be increased. Such an incentive would 
• encourage capable young women to enter the service of the 
rural schools, and to continue in this field of work for a time. 
It has been shown by experience that such teachers with a ca- 
pacity for leadership, uot only improve the quality of the school 
work, but also exercise a most helpful influence upon the com- 
munity life, this influence being shown in the betterment of 
economic and social conditions. 

Part II. 

Introduction. 
An agent of the Board of Education is preparing a manual 
for the instruction of teachers in the work of elementary ag- 
riculture. This bulletin is entitled " Some Agricultural Pro- 
jects for Elementary Schools." The nature of the work is best 
shown by a brief description of each of the four parts, and by 
an example of one of the projects. 

The Divisions of the Mcmual. 
Part I. The Projects. — This portion of the bulletin gives 
full and specific directions, whereby the children in the elemen- 
tary schools, under the direction of teachers, may successfully 
raise such vegetables as potatoes, tomatoes, parsnips, lettuce, 



98 

alfalfa and radishes. In all, fourteen such undertakings arc- 
described. 

Part II. Suggestions for Garden WorTc. — One finds here 
full directions as to how the work in gardening can he con- 
ducted to best advantage in an elementary school. The place 
of such work in the program is described, and a statement is 
added of the necessary equij)ment in land, tools, measures, 
seeds, fertilizers and reference and study books. 

Part III. Lahoratory Worh. — This section contains de- 
tailed descriptions of twelve experiments relating to ])lants and 
soil. 

Part IV. Collateral Worh. — Instruction is given as to 
the ways in which pupils may be given practice in the writing 
of letters, in the keeping of diaries, in applying arithmetic, 
drawing and manual training and in the use of business forms 
in connection Mnth the work of elementary agriculture. Sug- 
gestions are made on the use of material, afforded by elementary 
agi-iculture, as a basis for composition exercises. Possible 
correlation with the work in geography and in science is also 
indicated. 

The manual on agricidture projects should do much in pro- 
moting the practical work in the upper grammar grades, be- 
cause it ])uts at the command of teachers and superintendents 
a body of exercises that have been carefully prepared for use 
under usual school conditions. 

First Project. — Potato. 

A brief summary of this project is given as an illustration 
of the method of treatment used in the manual. 

Preparation of the Soil. — Advice is given on the kinds of 
soil adapted for potato culture. The proper time for plowing 
and the methods to be used in preparing the soil, by harrowing 
and furrowing, are also discussed. Several kinds of fertilizers 
are described. The manual j^oiuts out ways whereby fertilizers 
may be obtained at smallest expense and applied in the field to 
best advantage. 

Seed, Selection and Preparation. — ■ The standard varieties 
of seed and the qualities desired in potatoes used for planting 



99 

are described. Other topics are : the use of the formalin solu- 
tion to prevent scab, the need of care in sprouting, and the best 
ways of planting. 

CuUivatio7i. — Under this head instruction is given on hoe- 
ing and hilling. The use of Paris green to destroy the potato 
bug and spraying with the Bordeaux mixture to prevent blight 
are treated. 

Harvesting. — The manual tells the learner when and how 
a crop is harvested. A plan for estimating the ninnber of 
potatoes yielded by the field and a form for a report on the 
number of potatoes in each hill are given. A list of books 
dealing with potato culture is presented. 



100 



APPENDIX. 



®i|e (Emitmottmealtl] af iHaBsarl^usftta 

In the Year One Thonsand Nine Hundred and Ele\eii. 

An Act to codify and amend Legislation relating to State-aided 
Vocational Education. 

Be it enacted, etc., as foJIotvs: 

CONSTRUCTION. 

1 Section 1. Tlie following- words and jihrases as hereinafter used 

2 in this act shall, unless a different meaning- is [>lainly required by 
o the context, have the following meanings: — 

4 1. " Vocational education " shall mean any education Avhose con- 

.") trolling' purjiose is to fit for profitable employment. 

(I 2. " Indn.strial education. " shall mean that form of vocational edu- 

7 cation which fits for the trades, crafts and manufacturing pursuits, 

8 including- the occu]iations of girls and women can-led on in Avork- 

9 shops. 

to 3. " A^gricultural education'' shall mean that form of vocational 

11 education wdiich fits for the occupations connected with the tillage 

12 of the soil, the care of domestic animals, forestry and other wage- 

13 earning or i>roductive work on the farm. 

14 4. " Household arts " education shall mean that form of voca- 

15 tional education which fits for occupations connected wil'i tlm 

1 6 household. 

17 r-). '' Inde]:endent industrial, ngi-icultnral or household arts school " 

18 shall mean an org-anization of courses, ])upils and teachers, under a 
10 distinctive management a]ijn'oved by the board of education, de- 

20 signed to g-ive either industrial, agricultural or household arts edu- 

21 cation as herein defined. 

22 6. " Evening- class " in an industrial, agricultural or household arts 

23 school shall mean a class g-iving such training- as can be taken by 

24 persons already employed during- the working day, and which, in 

25 order to be called vocational, must in iis instruction deal with the 

26 subject matter of the day employment, and be so cai-ried on as 

27 to lelate to tlie day employment. 

28 7. "Part-time (or continuation) class" in an industrial, agricul- 
20 tnral or household arts school shall mean a vocational class for per- 

30 sons giving- a portion of their working time to profitable emi^loyment, 

31 and recei-ving in the part-time school, instruction complementary to 

32 the jiractical work which is being carried on in such employment. 



101 

33 To give " a portion of their working time " such persons must give 
3-1 a portion of each day, week or longer period to such part-time class 

35 during the period in which it is in session. 

36 8. '•' Independent agTicultural school " shall mean either an organi- 

37 zation of courses, pupils and teachers, under a distinctive manage- 

38 ment designed to give agricultural education, as hereinafter ]n-o- 

39 vided for, or a separate agricultural department, offering in a high 

40 school, as elective work, training in the principles and practice of 

41 agriculture of an extent and character approved by the board of 

42 education as vocational. 

43 9. " Independent household arts school " shall mean a vocational 

44 school designed to develop on a vocational basis the capacity for 

45 household work, such as the callings of cookery, household service 
40 and other occupations in the household. 

STATE ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION. 

1 Section 2. The board of education shall be charged with the duty 

2 and given all necessary power to investigate and to aid in the intro- 

3 duction of industrial, agricultural and household arts education ; to 

4 initiate and superintend the establishment and maintenance of 

5 schools for the aforesaid forms of education; and to supervise and 

6 approve such schools, as hereinafter provided. The board of edu- 

7 cation shall make a report annually to the legislature, describing 

8 the condition and progress of industrial, agricultural and household 

9 arts education during the year, and making sucli recommendations 
10 as such board may deem advisable. 

TYPES OF SCHOOLS. 

1 Section 3. In order that instruction in the principles and the 

2 practice of the arts may go on together, independent industrial. 

3 agricultural and household arts schools may offer instruction in day, 

4 part-time and evening classes. Attendance upon such day or part- 

5 time classes shall be restricted to those over fourteen and under 

6 twentj^-five years of age; and upon such evening classes, to those 

7 over seventeen years of age. 

LOCAL administration AND CONTROL. 

1 Section 4. Any city or town may, through its school committee 

2 or through a board of trustees elected by the city or town to serve 

3 for a period of not to exceed five years, to be known as the local 

4 board of trustees for vocational education, establish and maintain 

5 independent industrial, agricultural and household arts schools. 

1 Section 5. 1. Districts composed of cities or towns, or cities and 

2 towns, mav, through a board of trustees to be known as the district 



102 

3 board of trustees for vocntional education, establish and maintain 

4 independent industrial, agricultural or household arts schools. Such 

5 district board of trustees may consist of the chairman and two other 

6 members of the school committee of each of such cities and towns, 

7 to be appointed for the puri^ose by each of the respective school eom- 
cS mittees thereof; or any such city or town may elect three resi- 
9 dents thereof to serve as its representatives on such district board 

10 of trustees. 

11 2. Such a district board of trustees for vocational education may 

12 adojit for a period of one year or more a plan of organization, 

13 administration and support for such schools. Such a plan, if ap- 

14 proved by the board of education, shall constitute a binding contract 

15 between the cities or towns which are, through the action of their 

16 respective representatives on such a district board of trustees, made 

17 parties thereto, and shall not be altered or annulled except by vote 

18 of two-thirds of the entire district board of trustees and the consent 
10 of the board of education to such alteration or annulment. 

1 Section 6. I;0cal and district boards of trustees for vocational 

2 education, administei'ing approved industrial, agincultural or house- 

3 hold arts schools, shall, under a scheme to be approved by the board 

4 of education, appoint an advisory committee composed of members 

5 re]:)resenting local trades, industries and occupations. It shall be the 
fi duty of such advisory committees to counsel with and advise such 

7 local or district boards of trustees and other school officials having 

8 the management and supervision of such schools. 

NOX-RESIDEKT PUPILS. 

1 Sectiox 7. 1. Any resident of any city oi- town in Massachusetts 

2 which does not maintain an approved indejiendent industrial, agri- 

3 cultural or household arts school, offering the type of training which 

4 he desires, may make application for admission to such a school 
.') mnintained by another city or town. The board of education, whose 

6 decision shall be final, may approve or disapprove such ap]4ication. 

7 In making such a decision the board of education shall take into 

8 consideration : the opportunities for free vocational training in the 

9 community in which the applicont resides; the financial status of 

10 the community; the age, sex, pre]iai'ation, aptitude and previous 

11 record of the applicant; and all other relevant circumstances. 

12 2. The city or town in which the child resides, whose application 

13 for admission to an approved independent industrial, agxicultural 

14 or household arts school m.ainlained by another city or town has been 

15 ajiproved, shall pay such tuition fee as may be fixed by the board 
If) of education ; and the commonwealth shall reimburse such a city or 
17 town, as provided for in this act. If any city or town neglects or 



103 

18 refuses to pay for such tuition, it shall be liable therefor in an action 

19 of contract to the city or town, or cities and towns, maintaining the 

20 school which the pupil, with the approval of the said board, 

21 attended. 

REIMBURSEMENT. 

1 Section 8. Independent industrial, agricultural and household 

2 arts schools shall, as long as they are approved by the board of 

3 education as to organization, control, location, equipment, courses 

4 of study, qualificatious of teachers, methods of instruction, conditions 

5 of admission, employment of pupils and expenditures of money, 

6 constitute approved local or district independent vocational schools. 

7 Cities and towns maintaining such approved local or district inde- 

8 pendent vocational schools shall receive reimbursement as provided 

9 for in sections nine and ten of this act. 

1 Section 9. 1. The commonwealth, in order to aid in the mainte- 

2 nance of approved local or district independent industrial and house- 

3 hold arts schools and of independent agricultm-al schools consisting 

4 of other than agricultural departments in high schools, shall, as pro- 

5 vided for in this act, pay annually from the treasury to cities and 

towns maintaining such schools an amount equal to one-half the sum 
7 to be known as the net maintenance sum. Such net maintenance siun 
S shall consist of the total sum raised by local taxation and expended 
9 for the maintenance of such a school, less the amount, for the same 

10 period, of tuition claims, paid or unpaid, and receipts from the work 

11 of pupils or the sale of products. 

12 2. Cities and towns maintaining approved local or district inde- 

13 pendent agricultural schools consisting only of agricultural depart- 

14 ments in high schools shall be reimbursed by the commonwealth, as 

15 provided for in this act, only to the extent of two-thirds of the 

16 salai'y paid to the instructors in such agricultural departments: pro- 

17 vided, that the total amount of money expended by the common- 

18 wealth in the reimbursement of such cities and towns for the salaries 

19 of such instructors for any given year shall not exceed ten thousand 

20 dollars. 

21 3. Cities and towns that have paid claims for tuition in api^i'oved 

22 local or district indei^endent vocational schools shall be reimbursed 

23 by the commonwealth, as provided for in this act, to the extent of 

24 one-half the sum exjjended by such cities and towns in payment of 

25 such claims. 

1 Section 10. On or before the first Wednesday of January of each 

2 year the board of education shall present to the legislature a state- 

3 ment of the amount expended previous to the preceding first day 

4 of December by cities and towns in the maintenance of approved 



104 

5 local or district independent vocational schools, or in payment of 

6 claims for tuition in such schools, for which such cities and towns 

7 should receive reimbursement, as provided for in this act. On the 

8 basis of such a statement the legislatiu-e may make an appropriation 

9 for the reimbursement of such cities and towns up to such first day 
10 of December. 

ACTS AND PARTS OF ACTS KEPEALEU. 

1 Section 11. 1. Sections one to six inclusive of chapter live hun- 

2 dred and hve of the acts of nineteen hundred and six, sections one to 

3 four inclusive of chapter five hundred and seventy- two of the acts of 

4 nineteen hundred and eight, chapter five hundred and forty of the 

5 acts of nineteen hundred and nine, and all acts and parts of acts 

6 inconsistent herewith, are hereby repealed. 

7 2. Schools, heretofore established under the acts and parts of acts 
S repealed by this section, and approved by the board of education, 
9 shall continue in operation subject to the provisions of this act for 

10 such schools. 



LE 



THE COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS 

REPORT OF THE BOARD OF 
EDUCATION ON AGRI- 
CULTURAL EDUCATION 

Submitted to the Legislature of Massachusetts of 1911, in 
accordance with Chapters 108 and 133, Resolves of 1910 




V 



